The world has been shaken by various theories that North Korean troops are being sent to Russia to fight against Ukraine. This claim, which began with the Ukrainian government on October 13, was confirmed by the South Korean government on October 18, and by the U.S. government on October 23, and is now considered an established fact in the West. However, we believe that the deployment of the North Korean military to Russia has not yet been clearly confirmed. This is because all the sensational claims made by the West have not yet been backed up by any decisive evidence. And above all, we remember the historical crimes of US imperialism, which leads the West, in manipulating facts to start wars. The fabrication of the so-called Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964, in which it was known that North Vietnam had attacked US ships first, by the USA in order to intervene directly in the Vietnam War is now a historical fact that the USA itself recognizes. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was claimed to be to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, but in fact U.S. intelligence agencies already knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction, a fact confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Of course, we don't take Russia's and North Korea's denials at face value either. Given their past behavior, it is entirely possible that the deployment could be confirmed or become a reality. In particular, the North Korean Foreign Ministry's October 25 statement that “if such an action were to take place, it would be in line with international legal norms” confirms that some sort of process is underway. While it is true that NATO, led by the United States, has been strategically threatening Russia through its eastward expansion and proxy war in Ukraine, this does not justify Russia's war of aggression denying Ukraine's right to self-determination. As North Korea emerges from its long isolation due to the turbulence in the world order, it is a blatant manifestation of the reactionary nature of the North Korean regime that it denies the reunification of the Korean Peninsula, defines the relations between North and South Korea as hostile belligerents, and signs a military assistance treaty with the imperialist aggressor Russia. If the deployment of the North Korean military in the Russia-Ukraine war becomes a reality, it would be a highly reactionary act of participating in an imperialist war of aggression. It would be no different from the way the South Korean military participated in the U.S. imperialist invasions of Vietnam and Iraq. But no matter how the North Korean military deployment theory turns out, one thing is clear. The South Korean government's attempt to use the North Korean troop deployment as an excuse to intervene fully in the Russia-Ukraine war must be stopped by the struggle of the workers and people. The South Korean government has already indirectly provided Ukraine with the largest artillery ammunition in the West through the United States. Now it is openly talking about “directly supplying aggressive weapons” to Ukraine under the pretext of the North Korean troop deployment. Some are even talking about sending South Korean troops in response. If the South Korean government's involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war were to materialize, it would have very serious consequences. It would be a key player in escalating the Russia-Ukraine war to the next level, carrying the flames of the Russia-Ukraine war to the Korean Peninsula and creating an immediate confrontation situation. Nevertheless, Yoon's government is likely to take the risk of plunging into the flames of the Russia-Ukraine war. Just as Israel's Netanyahu has expanded wars and genocides throughout the Middle East to deflect his political crisis, Yoon's government is likely to mobilize military adventurism to resolve its political crisis. But the workers and people of South Korea are well aware of the devastating consequences of war on the Korean Peninsula. An October 25 Gallup poll in South Korea found that 80 percent oppose South Korea's military aid to Ukraine. The struggle of the workers and people against the Yoon government's military adventurism must be resolutely organized. The root of the problem is the imperialist hegemonic confrontation that is shaking the world today. As the Western imperialist camp led by the United States and the rising imperialist camp centered on China and Russia enter into a full-scale confrontation, the world is increasingly being plunged into wars of varying degrees. Both camps are imperialists who do not hesitate to use aggression and war to fulfill the interests of the ruling classes of the great powers, and this imperialist hegemonic confrontation is accelerating as the capitalist crisis deepens. If this continues, a third world war cannot be ruled out. The fundamental solution lies in building a united struggle of the working class around the world against imperialism and war. Let's organize the political general strike of the working class against the war and for Yoon's resignation now!

2024-11-01 | 조회 72

[Chapter 1] The Korean Peninsula in Danger of Falling Victim to the Imperialist Hegemonic Confrontation Again 1) Deepening Capitalist Contradictions Underlying Imperialist Hegemonic Confrontations and War Crises Since the 1980s, neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization have swept the world. Neoliberalism, which came to a head with the establishment of the WTO in 1995, along with the reform and opening up of China and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in 1989-91, created a US-led single world order. It was characterized by the creation of a single supply chain through the globalization of production and a single market through the globalization of markets. Global capitalism was reorganized along two axes: Chinese production and American consumption. This was accompanied by financialization, which led to a massive expansion of the financial sector. In the United States, the total assets of financial institutions as a percentage of GDP rose from 110.3% in 1985 to 224.2% in 2007. Through financialization, capital has compensated for the lack of profit through the exploitation of surplus value with financial extortion. However, the expansion of unbridled financial extortion led to the 2008 financial crisis. After the 2008 financial crisis, astronomical bailouts, quantitative easing, and ultra-low interest rate stimulus averted a major depression but instead ushered in a prolonged major recession. The growth of a few big tech and platform companies during the major recession created an "optical illusion" that capitalism was recovering, but in reality, capitalism as a whole was accumulating contradictions toward a larger crisis, with extreme disinvestment in industry. As a result of the contradictions inherent in globalization, the forces of anti-globalization have grown stronger. As the wage gap between developed and emerging economies has narrowed, reshoring has occurred, and protectionism has come to the fore, absorbing the energy of working people in the developed world who have experienced a sharp setback in their lives since 2008. The rise of protectionism, fueled by xenophobia, has led to the growth of all kinds of far-right forces based on various forms of minority phobia. While the real economy has been stuck in stagnation and low growth since the 2008 financial crisis, the stock and real estate markets have been booming, especially in the United States. Global capitalism is now in a much bigger bubble than before the 2008 financial crisis. In Q4 2007, just before the crisis, global stock market capitalization as a percentage of global GDP peaked at 115.5%; but, in Q4 2021, it was 128.1%. Capitalism has reached a point where it cannot survive without continued financial extortion. As the contradictions of globalization and financialization intensified, coupled with supply chain shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis, inflation began to return globally. In 2022, 43% of the world's countries experienced inflation of 10% or more. The difference with the 1970s was that this inflation came at a time when global capitalism should have kept ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing at full capacity for continuous financial extortion. Central banks, including the US Fed, have faced an unanswerable contradiction: whether to raise interest rates and risk panic, or to lower interest rates and risk hyperinflation. The current structural inflation has created a fatal dilemma for the global economy. Neither raising nor lowering interest rates is the answer. Fiscal expansion, ultra-low interest rates, and quantitative easing, which were critical in avoiding a major depression, are now on a collision course with inflation. The intensification of the US-China hegemonic confrontation and the deepening of the war crisis are developing on the basis of this structural contradiction of capitalism. The only way for capitalism to resolve this structural contradiction and escape from the economic and systemic crisis is through mass destruction and mass murder through small and big wars. 2) The War in Ukraine: Weakening US Hegemony and Strengthening the Sino-Russian Alliance Intensified US-China hegemonic confrontation was underlying the break out of the war in Ukraine. The United States had sought to compensate for its declining economic power by strengthening its military power, which was the reason for NATO's continued eastward expansion. Meanwhile, as the rise of China undermined US hegemony, Russia had sought to counterattack offensively by building up power in the Middle East and Africa. The war in Ukraine led to a realignment and rearmament of the US-led Western imperialist alliance. NATO was revived, providing massive arms shipments to Ukraine and promoting imperialist proxy wars. Spurred by a shaky world order, the Western powers embarked on an aggressive rearmament program. Germany and Japan announced plans to increase their military spending to 2% of GDP. The concerted response to the war in Ukraine seemed to have succeeded in reasserting US hegemony. The Biden administration campaigned on "restoring alliances" instead of "America first," but then followed through with a strong protectionist policy that stabbed allies in the back in the middle of a war. In line with his own America First platform, Joe Biden implemented the CHIPS and Science Act, which provides subsidies to companies that produce semiconductors in the United States and divest from China, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides subsidies to companies that move EV and battery production to North America. In addition, US energy companies have been exporting gas to Europe on behalf of Russia, reaping huge profits from Europe in a time of war. In response, Europe has stepped up its protectionism, pushing for an EU version of the Semiconductor Act, a Carbon Border Tax Act, and a Critical Materials Act. These triggers are undermining US hegemony over Europe. However, the United States will probably have no choice but to continue to increase bipartisan protectionism in the face of worsening economic conditions. European countries will be forced to push back more aggressively, and at some point, the United States may lose its hegemonic power over the European powers. Another important outcome of this war is the formation of an alliance between Russia and China. This is an unexpected consequence of Russia's strategic failure in the war. Russia is now unable to survive without China. China's trade with Russia reached $218.1 billion in November 2023, up 26.7% from the previous year. With China buying its energy and providing it with goods, Russia has maintained a stable growth rate despite massive economic sanctions from the West. In other words, if China cuts ties with Russia, Russia dies. In the past, alliances were difficult to form because of the lack of clear dominance between the two powers, but the war in Ukraine has created the conditions for a Sino-Russian alliance with China as the dominant power. Important countries such as India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and South Africa have responded positively, extending the influence of China and Russia throughout the so-called Global South. Indeed, countries representing three-quarters of the world's population have boycotted sanctions against Russia. Alongside this is the rise of the BRICS as an alternative to the G7 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an alternative to NATO. The BRICS is expanding its influence, with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates joining in January 2024. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has some dissonances, such as India's refusal to join China's declaration of support for the Belt and Road Initiative at the July 2023 SCO summit, but apart from India walking a tightrope between the United States and China, the organization is strengthening its position as a security cooperation organization that can stand up to NATO. There are also cracks in the Sino-Russian alliance. China has not officially supported Russia in the war in Ukraine. The age-old border dispute between India and China is also a variable. India walks a fine line between the Sino-Russian alliance and the Quad (US-Japan-Australia-India). In this situation, the world is not likely to be reorganized into a bipolar order between the United States and China, but rather into multipolar confrontations among new and old powers with the US-China hegemonic confrontation. A deepening major economic crisis is likely to strengthen the far right in each country and increase its tendency to rise to power. And protectionism, militarism, and expansionism are likely to come to the fore. In addition to the US-China hegemonic confrontation, the intertwined ambitions of Western powers such as Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Japan, and emerging powers such as Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Israel, Brazil, Nigeria, Egypt, and Indonesia are likely to form various power blocs and clash with each other, and the world is likely to be engulfed in small and big wars. 3) The US-China Hegemonic Confrontation Moving from Economic Warfare to Military Warfare The US-China trade dispute escalated in 2018 as protectionism and the far right grew. The percentage of US imports from China subject to tariffs increased from 1% to 66%, and the average tariff rate rose from 3.1% to 19.3%. In 2019, the United States declared high-tech restrictions and began sanctioning Huawei, a major Chinese tech company. The trade and technology dispute led to a political dispute over responsibility for the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. The US-China hegemonic confrontation is particularly fierce in the semiconductor industry, a key industry. The United States is attempting to reorganize the semiconductor supply chain to exclude China. In August 2022, the United States passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which effectively prohibits the expansion of semiconductor production in China if factories are built and subsidized in the United States. In October 2022, it restricted exports of advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China. It also restricted exports by companies from third countries, including the Netherlands and Japan, by banning exports if more than 10% US technology was used. Additional export controls were imposed on AI semiconductors. Although the US Semiconductor Association, which was hit hard by the restrictions, issued a statement in July 2023 calling for a "reconsideration of the policy," there is strong support from both Democrats and Republicans for the Biden administration's policy of "reorganizing the semiconductor supply chain." China is not standing still and is fighting back. Xi Jinping has taken the lead in pushing for semiconductor equipment independence. In May 2023, it began controlling US Micron products; in July 2023, it developed 28-nanometer lithography equipment; in August 2023, it began controlling exports of gallium and germanium; and in December, it began controlling exports of graphite. China has surpassed the United States in exports and FDI, and the gap in economic power between the two countries has narrowed. But when it comes to military power, the gap remains wide. As of 2022, military spending as a percentage of GDP is 3.5% in the United States and 1.6% in China, with the United States spending $876.9 billion on defense compared to $291.9 billion in China. To compensate for this military disadvantage, China has long been engaged in a major military buildup. In 2023, China increased its defense budget by 7.2% over the previous year. China's defense spending has grown by more than 10% year-over-year almost every year since 1989, topping 1 trillion yuan in 2017. Geopolitical tensions between the United States and China have been steadily rising over the long term, going through phases of seemingly temporary easing. "Our policy approaches are not designed to harm China nor do we seek to thwart China's economic progress and development," the participants in the May 2023 G7 meeting said in a joint statement, adding that they would pursue "de-risking" rather than "de-coupling" from China. At the same time, however, they took a hard line on the Taiwan issue, to which China, not surprisingly, reacted strongly. Military tensions escalated again in early June 2023, when a Chinese destroyer twice crossed in front of a US destroyer conducting Freedom of Navigation operations in the Taiwan Strait. On November 15, 2023, the United States and China met on the sidelines of APEC and attempted to create an atmosphere of de-escalation, but on December 6, 2023, one month before Taiwan's election, US P-8A maritime patrol aircraft flew over the Taiwan Strait as part of a Freedom of Navigation operation, leading to a renewed escalation of tensions between two great powers. 4) Taiwan: A Powder Keg in East Asia What is the significance of Taiwan in the US-China hegemonic confrontation? From a geopolitical perspective, Taiwan serves as a natural bulwark against China's expansion into the Pacific (via the ROK-Japan-Taiwan-Philippines line). Conversely, for China, Taiwan can be a key base in its quest to dominate all of East Asia by securing unfettered access to the Pacific. On the industrial side, Taiwan is home to TSMC, the world's most advanced semiconductor company. This is related to Taiwan's decisive role in the technology war between the United States and China. Taiwan dominates the global semiconductor industry. Taiwan produces 65% of the world's semiconductor chips, especially 92% of the most advanced chips. Symbolically, Taiwan is the touchstone for the completion of Chinese unification. No capitalist government in China, let alone Xi Jinping, would tolerate Taiwan's independence. Taiwan's independence would severely undermine the Chinese government's ability to contain the centrifugal forces in its periphery and increase pressure to break away from Beijing's control in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and elsewhere. For Chinese imperialism, the Taiwan question is a question of the survival of the Chinese state and capitalist rule, and the success or failure of its repression of internal contradictions. This conflict is also very important for the United States. The current US strategy is aimed at further consolidating the dominance it has maintained since 1945 over the Indo-Pacific region (a crucial region for global capitalism in the 21st century). For US imperialism, the loss of Taiwan (i.e., China's domination of Taiwan) would be a historic defeat with consequences far greater than the humiliation it suffered in the Vietnam War. Such an outcome would force a dramatic realignment of power relations throughout the Indo-Pacific region in China's favor, downgrading the status of the United States from world hegemon to one of several imperialist powers. With the election of the Democratic Progressive Party candidate for Taiwan's presidency on January 13, 2024, Taiwan's cooperation with the United States is likely to intensify more. While the conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan is in a temporary cooling phase, tensions over the island are bound to intensify as the global economic crisis deepens. China must control Taiwan to become the world's strongest power. The United States must prevent China from taking control of Taiwan if it wants to remain the global hegemon. Who wins the Taiwan conflict will be the decisive factor in the outcome of the US-China hegemonic confrontation. 5) The Middle East Crisis Sparked by Israel's Genocide Since October 7, the Israeli genocide has continued. As of January 12, 2024, more than 23,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Authority. The death toll in the West Bank also continues to rise. The US strategy of de-escalation in the Middle East, pursued along with its "Pivot to Asia," is in disarray. The United States had been pushing to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, following the normalization of Israel's relations with the UAE and Bahrain in September 2020, but Hamas' attacks and Israel's genocidal war have thrown a wrench into the plans. The US history and present of supporting Israel for its imperialist interests has led to the legitimate resistance of the people in the Middle East and hindered the US plan to stabilize the Middle East. Given the dynamics of the Middle East, the current situation is unlikely to be resolved in the short term. The far-right Netanyahu government has continued the genocide and sought to expand the war to a wider region in order to prolong its political life. The Biden administration, facing a presidential election, has shown an inability to control the escalation from Ukraine to the Middle East. Restoring the Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration unilaterally decertified in 2018, has also become impossible. The prospect of normalizing relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which was brokered by China in March 2023, is also unclear. As the Israeli slaughter continues, the likelihood of the Middle East crisis escalating into a regional war increases. Russia and China welcome the United States re-drawn into the Middle East. A US military buildup in the Middle East and more support for the Israeli military means fewer US military, financial, and diplomatic resources to support Ukraine and its Asian allies (against Chinese pressure). China and Russia hope that the Israeli war will frustrate US plans for the region, including the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. Both countries blame the United States for the war in Gaza and call for an immediate cease-fire. Of course, this is rhetoric, and it is clear that China and Russia are not interested in the cause of Palestinian liberation. Russia has developed a close relationship with Israel to expand its influence in the Middle East and China has continued its quiet cooperation with Israel's military industry, including drones and surveillance technology. 6) Establishment of a US-Japan-ROK vs. China-Russia-DPRK Confrontation Configuration around the Heavily Militarized Korean Peninsula Like climate disasters, the global economy, political terrains, and international relations are headed for disasters. The global economy is heading for a major financial depression accompanied by hyperinflation. Far-right forces are spreading like wildfire around the world. As time goes on, we will see more far-right regimes and fascist forces emerge and spread. The alternative that these fascist and far-right forces will choose to escape catastrophe will be something similar to World War II. It's not just a US-China hegemonic confrontation, but a number of minor powers will take advantage of the weakening of US power to consolidate their own power. With climate catastrophe striking the globe, over a global economic meltdown, a tangled web of wars of mass destruction by authoritarian, far-right, and fascist regimes will threaten to engulf the world. In such a global trend, the clouds of war are once again looming large over the Korean Peninsula, which was devastated by the tragic three-year war in 1950 as a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union. After the end of the Cold War, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) was isolated as the Soviet Union collapsed and China pursued a reform and opening-up policy. North Korea, like China, wanted to transition to a market economy and integrate into the new world order, and it began to develop nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip to get an agreement from the United States. For the United States, however, it was much more useful to isolate North Korea as an Axis of Evil and use it as a rationale for building a Missile Defense system in East Asia and encircling China, rather than to integrate it into its world order. North Korea's rulers realized five years ago, with the "Hanoi no-deal" between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, that there was no possibility of stable and secure integration into the US-led world order. North Korea blew up the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in June 2020 and has continued to take a hard line ever since. North Korea has now made it clear that its survival depends on solidifying its position as a clear subordinate partner in the China-Russia-DPRK alliance. On October 19, 2023, the Russian foreign minister visited North Korea and met with Kim Jong-un, where they talked about "faithfully implementing the agreements of the Russia-DPRK summit and building a new era with a century plan." Already in October, a sharp increase in Russia-DPRK freight train traffic was observed, suggesting North Korea's supply of ammunition to Russia. As announced at the September summit, North Korea is seeking "satellite development cooperation" from Russia in exchange for ammunition supplies to upgrade its nuclear capabilities. China has not publicly commented on the Russia-DPRK summit, but given its history of de facto support for Russia in the Ukraine war, it has no reason to oppose the formation of a China-Russia-DPRK bloc. Meanwhile, on December 30, 2023, Kim Jong-un told a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (North Korea’s ruling party) that "the North-South relationship is no longer a kinship relationship or a homogeneous relationship, but is completely stuck as a relationship between two hostile nations and two belligerents in a state of war." This is in stark contrast to the 1991 Inter-Korean Basic Agreement, signed by the governments of North and South Korea, which stated that "the relationship between the two sides is not a state-to-state relationship between countries but a special relationship provisionally formed in the process of pursuing reunification." Then, on January 15, 2024, the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea declared that "the Constitution should stipulate the Republic of Korea (South Korea) as the first hostile country and the unchangeable main enemy." Rather than a bargaining chip to get something in return from the United States and South Korea, this appears to be an expression of North Korea's confidence in its ability to make its own way in a new international order with the support of Russia and China. The US-Japan-ROK alliance is also strengthening. The Camp David Joint Statement of August 2023, a de facto declaration of military alliance between the United States, Japan, and South Korea, which states that the three countries "strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the Indo-Pacific waters," represents the emergence of another encirclement network against China after AUCUS and Quad. The regularization of the US-Japan-ROK joint military exercises will undoubtedly escalate military tensions with China, Russia, and North Korea and will be a key pillar in intensifying the arms race on the Korean Peninsula and beyond. South Korea's Yoon Suk-yeol government has never hesitated to align itself with US imperialism. The government has taken blatant steps to strengthen the trilateral alliance, including deceiving victims of forced labor in the name of trilateral security cooperation, acquiescing to US wiretapping, and tolerating the release of contaminated water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant. Under the US-Japan-ROK alliance, provocations such as the "Freedom of Navigation Operation through the Taiwan Strait" and massive joint military exercises have become routine. On the other side, in the China-Russia-DPRK alliance, China has stepped up military exercises near Taiwan, and North Korea frequently launches missiles with threatening words. Similar to the proxy war in Ukraine, a proxy war of imperialist hegemonic confrontation on the Korean Peninsula is becoming more and more possible. As geopolitical tensions in East Asia continue to escalate, East Asian socialists face difficult and urgent tasks. What positions should the working class in each of these countries take? How should they organize their movements? How should the working class in South Korea, an ally of US imperialism and a country facing China and North Korea, find a way out of the danger of war? What positions should the South Korean working class take to build real unity with North Korean workers? And where should we begin to build international unity of the working class in East Asia? [Chapter 2] The South Korean Capitalist Government Plunging into the Flames of Imperialist War under the US-Japan-ROK Triangular Alliance 1) Japanese Imperialist Colonization and the Establishment of the Republic of Korea Government in 1948 with an Anti-communist Ideology The Korean Peninsula, which lies directly on the Chinese mainland, was never free from the massive influence of the Chinese empire throughout its history. However, the Korean people managed to maintain their independence for two thousand years without being absorbed into the Chinese empire. While more than half of the modern Korean vocabulary is derived from Chinese characters, all Koreans use their own script, Hangul, to communicate, with different pronunciation and grammar from Chinese. This is a symbolic representation of the history of the Korean Peninsula, a region that has been in the magnetic field of Chinese civilization, yet has developed independently. The independence of the Korean Peninsula from China was achieved, on the one hand, through several armed struggles (the battles that repelled the Chinese invasion are celebrated as a proud piece of national history in both North and South Korea), and, on the other hand, through a high degree of diplomatic skill. For the successive dynasties of the Korean peninsula, "Sadae" (a term similar to voluntary subordination) to the Chinese empire was a process of acknowledging the universality of Chinese civilization while identifying themselves as part of that universal civilization. It also meant a collective security order in Northeast Asia. This was exemplified in the late 16th century, when Japan's Toyotomi Hideyoshi, with his powerful military forces, attempted to conquer the Ming Dynasty (China) through Joseon (Korea), the Ming Dynasty sent reinforcements to Joseon. The last feudal dynasty on the Korean Peninsula, Joseon, failed to make the transition to a modern capitalist state and was forcibly annexed by Japanese imperialism in 1910. The Korean people's fierce resistance to Japanese imperialism was not surprising given the long history of independent development on the peninsula. The struggle for national liberation was waged in various ways, including armed struggle by partisan units, terror such as the assassination of imperialist officials and the bombing of key colonial institutions, and mass struggles such as workers' strikes and tenant farmers' strikes. Especially after the March First Movement of 1919, which was sparked off by the Russian Revolution of 1917, the feudalist idea of restoring the monarchy quickly faded away in the national liberation movement. The national liberation movement was largely divided between the right-wing republican movement, represented by the Korean Provisional Government, and the left-wing movement, represented by the Korean Communist Party (led by Stalin's Comintern). Although the KCP was disorganized under the harsh repression of the Japanese police, with repeated arrests of its leadership, socialists continued to work among the workers to rebuild the KCP until liberation. There were also left-wing partisan militants who fought alongside the Chinese Communist Party in China's northeastern provinces adjacent to the Korean Peninsula. Among them was Kim Il-sung, whose raid on a Korean border post in 1937, the Battle of Bocheonbo, resonated with the colonized people. In 1940, Kim fled to the Soviet Union to escape Japanese repression and became a captain in the Soviet army. His experience as a captain in the Soviet army was a major advantage in his rise to the leadership of North Korea over the Yanan faction, which continued to fight alongside the CCP in northeastern China in the 1940s, and Park Heon-young, who led an underground movement to reestablish the KCP at home. In the 1930s, Japanese imperialism had consolidated its militarist fascist regime, culminating in the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and the Pacific War in 1941. During this period, the right wing of the national liberation movement, except for a few, abandoned the perspective of national liberation, and the left wing of the movement, which continued to fight for the reconstruction of the KCP or the armed struggle, took the initiative in the national liberation movement. Moreover, the devastating experience of the wartime looting economy in the late Japanese colonial period pushed the majority of the people towards socialism. Even the Korean Provisional Government, a representative of the right-wing camp, had to call for the nationalization of land and the main means of production as its founding principles. This atmosphere was reflected in the rapid growth of labor unions and peasant unions in August and September 1945, immediately after liberation following the surrender of Japan in World War II. Most of the labor unions took over and self-managed factories run by Japanese capitalists, while the peasant unions fought to oust landlords or lower land rents. "The South is best described as a powder keg ready to explode at the first spark," the US military's political adviser wrote to Washington on September 15, 1945, adding that "Communists in favor of the immediate seizure of Japanese property could threaten law and order" and that "a well-trained agitator could disrupt our region to support Soviet 'freedom' and domination and oppose the United States." Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that socialist forces along the lines of Stalinism would have come to power throughout the Korean Peninsula had it not been for the direct intervention of the US Army Military Government in Korea. The US military, which entered the Korean Peninsula south of the 38th parallel to disarm the Japanese forces based on the agreement with the USSR, began to forcibly implant anti-communism in the southern part of the peninsula in line with the onset of the international Cold War. In May 1946, the US military government outlawed the Korean Communist Party, which had been reestablished in 1945, by fabricating the Jeongpansa banknote forgery case, and violently suppressed a general strike in September 1946 and a popular uprising in October. In August 1948, Syngman Rhee, an American-style Christian, with the strong support of the US military government, established the government of the Republic of Korea covering only the south with an anti-communist platform. Syngman Rhee's government made extensive use of the notorious Korean figures of the ex-Japanese police to maintain power, which became a strong basis for North Korea's claim to ethnohistorical orthodoxy. Around the same time, in North Korea, the Soviet-backed government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, with Kim Il-sung as prime minister, was inaugurated in September 1948. In the immediate aftermath of the division, both sides made no secret of their intentions to restore their counter regions by force. All-out war began when Kim Il-sung, with Stalin's approval, launched a surprise attack on June 25, 1950. The immediate intervention of the US military, followed by the entry of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, led to a stalemate on all fronts, and the Korean War ended in an armistice after three years of heavy casualties. The Korean War confirmed that the Korean Peninsula was a geopolitical flashpoint between the United States and the USSR. The Korean War also wiped out leftist forces in the South and established violent anti-communism as a national ideology. This was exemplified by the massacre of 200,000 members of the Bodo League, a group of converts from leftist movements, shortly after the outbreak of the war. In the pre-democratization period before the late 1980s, participation in leftist movements in South Korea meant personal and family ruin. Of course, this anti-communist violence is still enshrined in the National Security Law to this day. Meanwhile, the Korean War served as the rationale for the return of US imperialist troops to Korea after their withdrawal from the peninsula in 1949. Since then, the United States has also exercised Wartime Operational Control over the South Korean military. In July 1950, shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War, Syngman Rhee transferred "operational command" to UN commander MacArthur, and in October 1953, the US-ROK Mutual Defense Treaty transferred "operational control" of the ROK armed forces to the UN commander and then to the US-ROK Combined Forces Command (commanded by a US four-star general), which was established in 1979. In 1994, Peacetime Operational Control was returned to the ROK military, except for Wartime Operational Control. While the Roh Moo-hyun (2003-2008) and Moon Jae-in (2017-2022) administrations announced plans to return Wartime Operational Control to the ROK military and used it as a rationale for military buildup, the subsequent Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013) and Yoon Suk-yeol (2022-) administrations have treated it as an unnecessary ideological issue. With the recent sharpening of the US-Japan-ROK vs. China-Russia-DPRK confrontation in East Asia, the return of Wartime Operational Control is likely to be a distant memory. About 28,500 US troops are currently stationed in South Korea, and the country remains unable to exercise basic military sovereignty. 2) The Growth of South Korean Capitalism, First Rapidly as an Anti-communist Outpost, Then Steadily as the Closest Economy to a Rising China South Korea became a Cold War outpost to block the expansion of the Stalinist system in East Asia and defend the international order of US imperialism. As the so-called "showcase of capitalism," South Korea received massive aid from the United States to rebuild its economy. In the 20 years from 1945 to 1965, South Korea received nearly $12 billion in aid. According to another analysis, the $6 billion in economic aid and loans South Korea received from 1945 to 1975 was close to the $6.8 billion in total US aid to the African continent and just under the $7.6 billion in USSR economic aid to the Third World. The $6.5 billion in US military aid to South Korea from 1950 to 1975 was more than double the $3.2 billion in aid to both Latin America and Africa. After seizing power in a military coup in 1961, Park Chung-hee embarked on a policy of rapid economic growth. Stalin's economic development policies were the historical prototype for the five-year plans that Park's government implemented several times. As a soldier in Manchukuo, Park had seen firsthand the results of Japan's 1936 Five-Year Plan for Industrial Development in Manchuria. Park established the Economic Planning Board, modeled after Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry, which devised an export-led industrialization strategy. The economic growth policy of the Park Chung-hee government was characterized by low grain prices, low wages, long working hours, violent suppression of labor movements, and concentration of capital based on government privileges. In short, it was a process of primitive accumulation of capital with state violence as an indispensable element. Park Chung-hee's government then embarked on heavy and chemical industrialization in the 1970s, which marked the formation of monopoly capital known as Chaebol in South Korea. The monopolies formed in the shipbuilding, automobile, and steel sectors are still highly competitive in the global market. Since then, South Korean capitalism has continued to grow despite some setbacks, including the economic crisis of the late 1970s and the currency crisis of the late 1990s. In the mid-to-late 1980s, popular protests for democracy and workers' struggles erupted in Korean society. This led to the introduction of procedural democracy, such as the direct presidential election system, and the democratic labor union movement gained citizenship. This was, of course, the result of a massive popular struggle, but it was also the result of Korean monopoly capital, which had come out of its immature stage, embracing change with confidence. The Roh Tae-woo government, which took office in 1988, followed the global trend of détente and began to establish diplomatic relations with Eastern Bloc countries that had previously been categorized as enemy states. South Korea established diplomatic relations with Hungary in 1989 and with the Soviet Union in 1990, shortly before its collapse. This shows the determination of Korean monopoly capital to keep up with the global trend of the dissolution of the Cold War and the expansion of the neoliberal order. The establishment of diplomatic relations with China, a former belligerent in the Korean War, was particularly symbolic. During the Cold War, South Korea and Taiwan had been anti-communist allies, facing common enemies, China and North Korea, and this had not changed after the establishment of US-China diplomatic relations in the 1970s. But China, with its huge market and cheap labor of 1.3 billion people, was now too big to pass up for South Korean monopoly capital. Anti-communist ideas took a back seat to the profit motive of capital. On August 24, 1992, the Taiwanese embassy in Seoul lowered its Blue Sky with a White Sun Flag and the next day raised the Chinese Five-star Red Flag. (The embassy building itself was transferred from Taiwan to China.) South Korean capital, which had a technological advantage, rushed to set up factories in China after the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea, and made huge profits by supplying intermediate and capital goods to China's export industries. Even during the global financial crisis of 2008, South Korean capitalism managed to survive the crisis with positive growth thanks to the increase in exports to China, which was a great boost for South Korean capital. Specifically, the trade balance with China, which had a surplus of $14.4 billion in 2008, jumped to $32.4 billion in 2009 and $37.0 billion in 2010. Of course, it should not be overlooked that the strong competitiveness of South Korea's export industry during the financial crisis was largely a result of the surge in the number of irregular workers (temporary workers, dispatchers, subcontractors) in the early and mid-2000s, which increased the overall rate of exploitation. In particular, the long hours and low wages of unorganized subcontracted workers in large factories were an open "trade secret" of South Korean monopoly capital. This period also saw a surge in the export of cultural products, known as the "Korean Wave," which gave South Koreans a great deal of confidence in China. It is not an exaggeration to call the period from the 1990s to the mid-2010s "an unprecedented time in the two-thousand-year history of the Korean Peninsula when Koreans felt superior to the Chinese." A symbolic moment in China-ROK relations at that time was the participation of Park Geun-hye, a pro-US right-wing president, in a military parade on the Victory over Japan Day in China in September 2015. In 2015, when signs of a US-China hegemonic rivalry were already emerging, South Korea was the only pro-Western country whose leader participated in the parade. Park Geun-hye took a seat next to Xi Jinping with Vladimir Putin in the middle, despite US objections, and her participation was supported by 70% of South Koreans. The phrase that circulated at the time was "America for security, China for economy." The idea was that in a military confrontation with North Korea, South Korea would use the military power of the United States, including US Forces Korea, while securing the profits of capital through the Chinese economy. It was a pragmatic attitude that Korean capitalism could maximize its profits by walking a tightrope between the United States and China. The tendency of Korean capitalism to emerge from decades of immature subordination and begin to look for its perspective was also expressed in the August 2012 visit to Dokdo by another right-wing president Lee Myung-bak, Park Geun-hye's predecessor. US imperialism never wants Japan and South Korea, its subordinate partners in East Asia, to come into conflict. However, there are many historical conflicts between Japan and South Korea that stem from imperialist colonial rule, and the Dokdo territorial dispute is one of them. Despite its effective control over Dokdo, South Korea had not publicly asserted its sovereignty over the islands in order to avoid a Japan-ROK conflict in the face of US concerns. Under these circumstances, Lee's visit to Dokdo demonstrated his administration's willingness to sour relations with Japan in order to prevent the strengthening of the US-Japan-ROK alliance and to continue its partnership with the Chinese economy. 3) China's Clear Pursuit of "Rise as a Great Power" and The Spread of Anti-China Sentiment in South Korea Walking the tightrope between the two great powers was only possible when the US-China hegemonic rivalry was not in full swing. In 2016, the United States pushed for the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea as part of its Missile Defense system. The rationale was to defend against North Korean nuclear missiles, and the Park Geun-hye administration bought into it, but the real reason for the deployment was to deter China's strategic nuclear missiles. China reacted fiercely, and in 2017, when the THAAD deployment was implemented, it imposed economic retaliation. South Korean capital in China suffered significant losses. For example, Hyundai Motor's local joint subsidiary in China, Beijing Hyundai, saw its revenue shrink from KRW 20.1 trillion in 2016 to KRW 4.9 trillion in 2022. There's no denying that China's economic retaliation against South Korea is also driven by a traditional sense of great power. During the 2017 US-China summit, Xi Jinping reportedly told Donald Trump that "Korea was part of China," referring to thousands of years of history. This was enough to stir the wariness that South Koreans had traditionally toward the Chinese empire. Conversely, anti-China sentiment in South Korea has grown rapidly. In 2015, 37 percent of South Koreans had an unfavorable view of China, but by 2022, 81 percent had a negative view, the highest among the 56 countries surveyed. Anti-China sentiment is also high among younger South Koreans, who cite "dictatorship and suppression of human rights" as a significant reason for their anti-China sentiment. The more progressive young people perceive themselves to be, the less favorable they are toward China. In 2019, South Korean university students got into verbal fights with Chinese students while supporting the Hong Kong protests. This suggests that in order for the working class in East Asia to realize international solidarity, they will have to address the issue of China's authoritarian rule head-on. South Koreans are also frustrated that China, a country that can exert influence over North Korea, has effectively turned a blind eye to its nuclear program. While China has officially opposed North Korea's nuclear program, it has not imposed any real sanctions on the country. On the one hand, China is uncomfortable with North Korea escaping its control, but on the other hand, it needs North Korea as a buffer against the US-Japan military alliance. Therefore, China has continued to provide economic support to Pyongyang under the radar, even while voting for international sanctions against North Korea. (After 2020, when the imperialist hegemonic rivalry intensified, China and Russia now officially oppose further sanctions against North Korea.) When North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006, it was thought to be a problem that could be solved through peace negotiations such as the Six-Party Talks (US, Japan, China, Russia, North Korea, and South Korea). However, in 2016 and 2017, North Korea's nuclear arsenal became a real and irreversible threat to the workers and people of South Korea as it announced the "completion of its national nuclear arsenal," including the miniaturization and lightweighting of its nuclear warheads and the success of its intercontinental ballistic missile development. However, China's failure to impose any real sanctions on North Korea's nuclear program has exacerbated public sentiment in South Korea. (Of course, it's only fair to mention that the people of North Korea have also long lived under the threat of US imperialism's terrifying nuclear arsenal. After deploying nuclear weapons to the US Forces Korea in 1958, the US military withdrew its tactical nuclear weapons only in 1991, leading to the North-South Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which took effect in 1992. However, US-ROK military exercises on the peninsula have not stopped, and as recently as 2023, the leaders of the United States and South Korea decided that a strategic nuclear submarine carrying 24 nuclear missiles would make regular visits to South Korea.) 4) The Dependence of South Korean Capitalism on the US, Demonstrated by Its Powerlessness over the Deadlock in US-DPRK Relations Since the armistice in the Korean War in 1953, North and South Korea have made some progress in peace negotiations. These include the adoption of the 1992 Inter-Korean Basic Agreement and the 2000 Inter-Korean Summit. The latter was the first inter-Korean summit and the event that earned liberal South Korean President Kim Dae-jung the Nobel Peace Prize. Kim Dae-jung believed that the so-called "Sunshine Policy" could lead North Korea to reform and open up. Kim openly spoke of a "North Korean Special Opportunity" that would surpass the "Middle East Special Opportunity" and open the way for tremendous capital accumulation, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises with weak competitiveness. (This was partially realized with the establishment of the Kaesong Industrial Complex in 2004, but the Park Geun-hye government shut it down in 2016 because it was the North's window to foreign currency.) However, Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine Policy" was effectively derailed by the election of George Bush in the November 2000 US presidential election. As Bush stepped up pressure on North Korea, citing the "axis of evil," the North Korean regime gave up hope of improving relations with the United States and began full-scale nuclear development. That the South Korean government's efforts to improve inter-Korean relations always have to be approved by the United States is evident in the way the September 19 Inter-Korean Declaration, the outcome of the 2018 Inter-Korean Summit, has fizzled out. South Korean President Moon Jae-in promised his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un, that he would normalize economic cooperation projects such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex "as conditions permit." By conditions, he meant the United States lifting economic sanctions on North Korea. However, the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019 ended in a "no deal," and the South Korean government was unable to fulfill any of its agreements with North Korea. In June 2020, a disgruntled North Korea blew up the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in the Kaesong Industrial Zone, which had been built after the 2018 inter-Korean summit. In a uniquely North Korean fashion, it declared a rupture in inter-Korean relations. In fact, from December 2018 to January 2024, there has been no dialog between the two sides. The bombing of the Inter-Korean Liaison Office was a symbolic event that signaled a policy shift by the North Korean regime, which no longer relied on improving inter-Korean or US relations. But it also sparked widespread anti-North Korean sentiment among South Koreans. Young people, in particular, have come to believe that the North Korean leadership is an irrational one that ignores even the most basic principles of diplomatic relations and will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons to maintain its regime. For South Korean monopoly capital, which is facing a declining population due to low birth rates and declining profit margins, North Korea's natural resources and cheap labor, especially those who speak the same language, represent an irresistible profit-making opportunity. Even years after the Kaesong Industrial Complex closed in 2016, more than 90 percent of the companies with factories in Kaesong expressed their intention to return if the complex reopened, as the excess profits from using North Korean labor far outweighed the security risks. Thus, for South Korean capital, improving relations with North Korea is directly in its interest. Nevertheless, the South Korean capitalist government has been trying hard to follow the US policy on inter-Korean relations. First, this has to do with the high dependence of the South Korean economy on foreign trade. In 2022, the ratio of South Korea's exports and imports to its nominal Gross National Income reached 100.5 percent. According to the OECD, in 2020, the United States had a ratio of 31.4 percent, Japan 37.5 percent, and France 66.1 percent, all of which are much lower than South Korea. Moreover, the majority of South Korean capital is still technologically dependent on the United States. Therefore, for the South Korean capital to break away from the US imperialist-dominated world order and go its own way is a gamble that could severely damage foreign trade and ruin the country's economy. It is also difficult to imagine South Korea, which still cedes military sovereignty to the United States, pursuing its own interests at the expense of deteriorating relations with the United States. The cost to South Korean capital of being outside the security umbrella of the overwhelming military power of the United States is enormous, so South Korea is willing to pursue its own interests to a limited extent as long as the United States allows it to do so but hesitates and retreats when it has to step outside the boundaries drawn by the United States. This is why the former Moon Jae-in administration was unable to actively improve inter-Korean relations, as the United States refused to lift economic sanctions against North Korea. 5) The Yoon Suk-yeol Government Going All Out for the US-Japan-ROK Triangular Alliance with the US-China Hegemonic Confrontation Coming to a Head As the US-China hegemonic confrontation has intensified, South Korean capital has been forced by the United States to choose between the United States and China. For example, in the case of semiconductors, one of South Korea's major exports, the US CHIPS and Science Act prohibits South Korean semiconductor manufacturers from expanding in China by more than 5% over the next 10 years if they receive subsidies from the United States. In addition, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, both of which have semiconductor plants in China, effectively need permission from the US government to bring US-made equipment into their Chinese factories. As a military crisis over the Taiwan Strait is likely to erupt in East Asia, the trilateral military alliance between the United States, Japan, and South Korea is being strengthened. In August 2023, a trilateral summit was held at Camp David, the US presidential vacation house. On that day, the leaders of the capitalist governments of the United States, Japan, and South Korea again took direct aim at China, calling its so-called "actions inconsistent with the rules-based international order." They said that "we strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the waters of the Indo-Pacific" (i.e., the Taiwan Strait) and "unlawful maritime claims by the People's Republic of China in the South China Sea," and pledged to "enhance strategic coordination between the US-Japan and US-ROK alliances" and to "hold annual, named, multi-domain trilateral exercises on a regular basis." Prior to that, the Yoon government engaged in criminal behavior to violently shake off internal factors that hindered the strengthening of the US-Japan-ROK triangular alliance. This was the issue of forced labor, which is one of the contentious historical issues in the relations between Japan and South Korea. During the Japanese imperialist colonial period (1910-1945), Japanese capital forcibly recruited Korean workers and forced them into slave labor. An estimated 1.5 million forced laborers were brought from Korea to Japan, where they were paid less than half the wages of Japanese workers and subjected to 10-14 hours of heavy labor per day. In 2018, the South Korean Supreme Court upheld a ruling that forced labor company Shin Nippon Steel must pay damages to the victims, but Japan countered that the 1965 Agreement Between Japan and ROK extinguished all claims. In March 2023, the Yoon government announced that it would finally resolve the issue by having a third party (a foundation composed of South Korean companies) pay the victims regardless of the Supreme Court's ruling. This was unacceptable to the victims, who had been demanding an official apology and compensation from the Japanese government and capital. The violent brushing off of colonial history as an obstacle to strengthening the trilateral alliance between the United States, Japan, and South Korea was also seen in the 2015 Japan-Korea Comfort Women Agreement by the Park Geun-hye administration. During World War II, the Japanese imperialist government forcibly dragged civilian women from occupied territories such as colonial Korea to wartime "comfort stations" and forced them to have sex with soldiers to "comfort" them. Japanese right-wingers have been denying the history of this massive war crime and sexual offense at every opportunity, claiming that there was no coercion. However, in December 2015, the Park Geun-hye government reached an agreement with the Japanese government to compensate the victims through a foundation established by the South Korean government and declared that the issue of comfort women had been "resolved finally and irreversibly." The United States, which was believed to have pushed for the 2015 agreement behind the scenes, praised it as a "commitment to forging a more productive and constructive bilateral relationship," but more than half of South Koreans, including former comfort women themselves, considered it humiliating. The question is, why the Yoon administration, which came to power in 2022, is betting everything on the US-Japan-ROK triangular alliance? As the US-China hegemonic confrontation has intensified, some in the South Korean capitalist political establishment have argued that South Korea should conduct a balanced diplomacy between the two great powers. This is because the 2017 THAAD retaliation has already shown that a deteriorating relationship with China does not serve the interests of the South Korean capital. However, the Yoon administration has been at the forefront of the triangular alliance, holding the US hand between the two great powers at the risk of a Chinese backlash. The US-Japan-ROK vs. China-Russia-DPRK confrontation configuration is clearly taking shape in East Asia, but the Yoon government is unconcerned. Of course, this attitude of the Yoon government cannot be understood apart from the personal characteristics of the core members of the regime, who are mostly pro-American right-wingers. Their ideologues are mostly US-educated and have experienced the growth of South Korean capitalism under US auspices. They are obsessed with the factional logic that Kim Dae-jung's and Moon Jae-in's "appeasement policy to North Korea" or "pro-China policy" must be opposed at all costs, and that this is a winning electoral strategy. On the other hand, and more fundamentally, the intensification of the US-China hegemonic confrontation means that the middle ground between the two great powers is shrinking. Since the confrontation between the two great powers for world hegemony cannot be resolved peacefully, the Korean monopoly capital and the capitalist government representing it are forced to take sides. In a situation where the factionalization around the two powers is becoming clearer, especially in terms of the reorganization of the supply chain, the Korean monopoly capital, which is centered on manufacturing exports and needs to increase the proportion of foreign trade with the Global South in the future, seems to have decided that it is safer to side with the United States, which has a much greater military power, than with China, which will be a competitor in the Global South's market. It is also worth noting that the United States exercises Wartime Operational Control over the South Korean military. South Korea still has to rely on US military power in a military confrontation with North Korea. (This has worked to South Korea's advantage in the past, allowing it to reduce military spending and focus on economic growth.) With South Korea's military sovereignty ceded to the United States, it is very difficult for South Korean capital and government to avoid siding with an increasingly assertive United States against China. This is because being excluded from a security alliance with the United States means that South Korean capital will have to pay much more to maintain a military force to protect itself. However, this means that in the event of an imperialist hegemonic war between the United States and China in East Asia in the future, the people of the Korean Peninsula will inevitably be dragged into the middle of the war. In the event of a war between the United States and China, the United States would have no choice but to mobilize the US Forces Korea as an offensive force, and China would surely launch missile attacks on the USFK bases in response. It cannot be completely ruled out the possibility that in the future the Korean capitalist state, representing the Korean monopoly capital, will reveal its inherent desire to become an imperialist power by taking advantage of the emergence of a multipolar system following the intensification of the US-China hegemonic competition and the further weakening of the US hegemony. However, given the aforementioned factors, it seems more likely that the Korean monopoly capital will take the safe way of aligning itself with the dominant US-centered international order for some time to come. [Chapter 3] The North Korean Regime, Its Nuclear Program, and the China-Russia-DPRK Alliance Today 1) Stalinist System Implanted from Above without Revolution from Below After liberation from Japan, the system that emerged in North Korea was established without a revolution from below. The United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom decided at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 to establish a trusteeship over the Korean Peninsula. The decision was not implemented, but the result was the same. Immediately after liberation, the United States and the USSR divided the Korean Peninsula into South Korea and North Korea along the 38th parallel and imposed military rules for three years. North Korea was placed under the jurisdiction of the Soviet Union and South Korea under the jurisdiction of the United States. The division of Korea into North and South was carried out according to the global interests of the United States and the Soviet Union. As the victorious powers against Japan and Germany, the United States and the USSR divided the Korean Peninsula (along with the East-West divide in Europe) to bring it under their respective spheres of influence, like dividing the spoils of war. In August 1945, when Japanese rule ended on the Korean Peninsula, there was a high potential for the emergence of an independent people's regime. The right-wing groups lacked popular credibility because of their history of service to the Japanese, while the left, which had waged an uncompromising armed struggle against the Japanese, enjoyed strong popular support. In addition to the communists who had fought in the anti-Japanese war in China, some communists had operated clandestinely on the Korean peninsula. If these left-wing forces had been united in a people's revolution from below, there would have been ample opportunity to establish an independent people's government on the Korean Peninsula. However, the possibility of an independent national liberation of the Korean Peninsula through the power of the workers and people, with the communists playing a leading role, was thwarted by the division of the peninsula by the United States and the USSR and the subsequent imposition of their provisional military regimes. This divided all the movements into South and North Korea. Through the military regime, the United States and the USSR stifled and controlled the independent organizations and movements in the South and the North. In both the South and the North, the composition of the governments was almost entirely in accordance with the wishes of the United States and the USSR. The difference was that in the South the government was centered on the far right while in the North it was centered on the left. However, the right of self-determination of the workers and people was denied in such compositions of governments and the interests of the United States and the USSR and the closeness to the officers of the United States and the USSR were decisive. North Korea became an instrument for the global expansion of the USSR Stalinist bureaucracy. In establishing the North Korean regime, the USSR Stalinist bureaucracy was concerned with who would faithfully represent the interests and needs of the USSR bureaucracy. As a result, Kim Il-sung was chosen as the leader of the North Korean regime because of his career as an officer in the USSR army and his ties to the USSR bureaucracy. Communists who had participated in the anti-Japanese war in China or who had operated clandestinely in Korea under the Japanese were excluded from the core power and, after the Korean War, eliminated through purges. North Korea became an instrument for the global expansion of the USSR Stalinist bureaucracy. In establishing the North Korean regime, the USSR Stalinist bureaucracy was concerned with who would faithfully represent the interests and needs of the USSR bureaucracy. As a result, Kim Il-sung was chosen as the leader of the North Korean regime because of his career as an officer in the USSR army and his ties to the USSR bureaucracy. Communists who had participated in the anti-Japanese war in China or who had operated clandestinely in Korea under the Japanese were excluded from the core power and, after the Korean War, eliminated through purges. The system created by the Kim Il-sung regime in North Korea was a direct imitation of the Stalinist system of the USSR. Formally, there were People's Committees modeled on their USSR counterparts, but they were merely puppets of the party bureaucracy, just as in the USSR. The self-organization institutions of the workers and people were stifled before they could properly emerge, and their bureaucratic variants were subordinated to control from above. The People's Committees were required to unilaterally submit to the decisions and instructions of the Party, which was controlled by the USSR bureaucracy. The prospect of a revolution from below by the working class and people, and of a permanent revolution in which a national liberation revolution develops into a socialist workers' revolution, was closed before it had even begun. Radical measures such as the "free confiscation and free distribution" of the landlords' land were taken, but these were measures from above to consolidate control over the peasant masses, not a revolution from below. There was no revolution from below in any form in North Korea after 1945. The system established in North Korea after 1945 was a Stalinist system without revolution, copied from the USSR for the interests of the USSR bureaucracy. 2) The Adventurist Korean War That Ended a Revolution on the Korean Peninsula from Below The 38th parallel, a military demarcation line drawn by the United States and the USSR, became the border between North and South Korea. North Korea accelerated its military buildup to the point of overwhelming the South. The international situation also changed dramatically. On March 17, 1949, a military secrecy agreement was signed between the USSR and North Korea. On the Chinese mainland, the revolutionary government of Mao Zedong was established in October 1949, and a mutual defense treaty was signed between China and North Korea. In the South, the withdrawal of US troops from Korea was completed in June 1949, and in January 1950, Secretary of State Acheson announced the exclusion of South Korea and Taiwan from the US defensive perimeter in Asia, which ran from Japan through the Ryukyus to the Philippines. Encouraged by these developments, Kim Il-sung finalized a plan for armed reunification at the Central Political Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (North Korea's ruling party) in early April 1950, after Stalin had approved his war plan for the Korean Peninsula. The Korean War, which began in June 1950 with a preemptive strike by North Korea, was an adventurist gamble that closed off the possibility of a revolution on the Korean Peninsula through the unity of the workers and people of North and South Korea. The Korean War was a tragedy born out of pessimism about the possibility of an independent revolution among the workers and people of South Korea and fueled by the mistaken belief that a revolution could be "exported" militarily. The South Korean left, already weakened by the ruthless repression of the US military government and the subsequent far-right government, was completely isolated among the masses and decimated in the course of the Korean War. This was because, in the eyes of the South Korean workers and people, the Korean War was simply a war of aggression by the North. In the end, the Korean War became a proxy war between the United States and the USSR. Contrary to the expectations of Kim Il-sung and Stalin, the United States became fully involved in the Korean War in order to block the USSR's southern march. The war situation was reversed, and Stalin, burdened by an all-out war with the United States, abandoned direct intervention. Instead, China's Mao Zedong stepped in, as the newly revolutionary Chinese government was extremely reluctant to have American influence operating right under its nose. Now the Korean War became an international war involving the United States and China. Eventually, a balance of military power was achieved and the war ended in an armistice in July 1953, with the 38th parallel being replaced by the armistice line. The armistice line, geographically not so different from the 38th parallel, divided the workers and people of the Korean Peninsula dozens of times more than the 38th parallel. The 38th parallel was a wall of division imposed by a foreign power. The workers and people of the Korean Peninsula still believed that they were one and should be reunited one day. However, the workers and people of North and South Korea were torn apart in a massive war of kinship murder in which millions were killed. In this great tragedy, the South Korean working class was hijacked by far-right forces and US influence. The North Korean army was seen not as a liberator but as an invading army slaughtering South Koreans, while the United States was seen as the blood brotherhood that saved the South Korean people. The far right took complete control of the South, and the leftist movement was virtually wiped out by massacres of leftists and even suspected leftists. The adventurism of the Kim Il-sung regime ended in disaster. 3) A Bureaucratic System Based on the Elimination of All Opposition and the Personality Cult to Completely Block the Self-Organization of the Working Class The tragic legacy of the Korean War was not limited to the South. Faced with a war that cost millions of lives and ended with nothing to show for it, North Korea's Kim Il-sung regime needed to find a scapegoat to take the blame. Furthermore, the Kim regime sought to consolidate its bureaucratic control by cracking down on dissent. He executed Park Heon-young, a symbol of the communist movement under the Japanese, under the guise of being an American spy, and similarly purged the Yanan faction. In 1958, the ruling Workers' Party of Korea was completely taken over by the Kim Il-sung faction. This brutal dictatorship was justified by the political ideology of defending the country from US imperialism. The North Korean-style Stalinist bureaucracy, which eliminated all opposition, evolved endlessly. The personality cult of the Stalinist system in the USSR was copied in North Korea. Under the heavy surveillance of the secret police, every aspect of society was controlled by Kim Il-sung's bureaucracy. No self-organization of the workers and people was allowed, except for the ruling Workers' Party of Korea and its puppet organizations, in which Kim Il-sung's bureaucracy gathered. There was no democracy within the party, and basic political rights were completely ignored throughout society. Even elections were a mere formality filled with 100 percent approval. The politics of the personality cult eventually merged with the Confucian culture of East Asia to create a hereditary system of supreme leadership. (Of course, this system operates on a different historical basis than the feudal hereditary monarchy. In North Korea, the hereditary system of supreme leadership functions as a structural device for stable rule by the bureaucracy as a collective capitalist exploiting the working class.) The North Korean bureaucracy, symbolized by the hereditary system, has completely blocked all the pores of self-organization of the workers and people, and replaced them with a dense network of repressive intelligence and surveillance apparatus and bureaucratic administration. The huge cogs of the bureaucratic apparatus have blocked the self-organization of the working class and atomized the working class. The main ideological veneer of this vast system of bureaucratic surveillance and control has been the defense of the "socialist" state against US invasion, but its essence has been to promote the stability of the rule of the Stalinist bureaucracy. 4) Massive Famine and the Spread of the Market Economy North Korea's bureaucratic ruling system faced a major challenge after the 1980s: the crisis of the system of bureaucratic state capitalism. Until the early 1970s, the North Korean economic system had an advantage over the South Korean system. Under Japanese imperialism, major heavy industrial production was concentrated in the north of the peninsula, giving North Korea an economic advantage over the South for a considerable period. North Korea was also able to gain significant support from both the USSR and China through tightrope diplomacy in the rift between the two. However, this economic advantage faded in the 1970s as industrialization took hold in the South with the full support of the United States. The North Korean bureaucracy continued to devote a large portion of its social resources to military spending. The bureaucratic command economy, which had nothing to do with democratic planning with the active participation and self-control of the working class, proved increasingly limited in its ability to rationally organize the economy. Fictitious plans that put the accumulation logic of the system ahead of the lives of the masses became increasingly crude in the face of competition among bureaucrats, and the organic harmony between industries was destroyed. In the 1980s, the economic superiority between North and South Korea was reversed. The real crisis in North Korea's economy came in the early 1990s when the collapse of the USSR sharply weakened external support for the regime. The heavy and chemical industries, which relied heavily on trade and support from the USSR, were hit hard. Along with the energy crisis, other industries that supported the agricultural infrastructure were weakened. The years after 1994 were marked by natural disasters such as droughts and floods. With social coping capacities exhausted, the natural disasters were catastrophic. The economic standard of living of the masses plummeted, and hundreds of thousands starved to death. A massive famine engulfed North Korean society. The massive famine of the 1990s shook North Korea's bureaucratic state-capitalist system. But the system did not have the means to deal with the crisis. The bureaucratic command economy had no real capacity to cope with a social crisis. As the existing economic system came to an end, the market economy expanded spontaneously. Small black markets called jangmadang (meaning "marketplace") expanded throughout the country, and many daily necessities were traded through these black markets. For many commercial transactions, the Chinese yuan circulated as the de facto currency replacing the official North Korean currency. "Among the jangmadangs that have developed with the North Korean people's struggle for survival, as of February 2018, there were more than 480 authorized general markets in North Korea, along with many other markets such as alley markets and night markets. North Koreans use these markets to meet eighty to ninety percent of their daily needs. ... There are more than a million North Koreans working in various types of trading spaces. If you include their families, more than one-third of North Koreans get more than two-thirds of their income from the jangmadangs. At the base of this is private banking, mainly run by the wealthy, which acts as a financial company." (Joo Sung-ha, 2018, Encyclopedia of Capitalism in Pyongyang, Bookdodoom Press, p. 40, no foreign translation published) The spread of the market economy was not limited to the small informal markets of the jangmadangs. A more important channel for the spread of the market economy was in the formal economy in the form of "public-private partnerships" and "foreign trade." "Since the mid-1990s, the North Korean government has been in a state of almost complete economic failure. ... Due to this lack of central funding, government organizations have, essentially, been left to their own devices. ... The ad-hoc solution has been for officials to start quasi-private businesses under the umbrella of their organization. ... A member of a government entity ... with good political connections and permission to travel abroad will seek out joint ventures or import-export opportunities in China, or even further afield. Food, agricultural supplies, medicine, and consumer luxuries are considered particularly important areas. ... Only some of the proceeds go to the state, though. ... A highly profitable firm can, therefore, very easily be turned into a modestly profitable one, allowing those who run the business to pocket around 60-70 percent of the earnings, with the rest going up the department, and higher-ups who need bribing." (Daniel Tudor et al, 2017, North Korea Confidential, Biabook Press, pp. 38-40, quoted from the English original) "The snowball of marketization in North Korea continues to gain weight and speed, to the point where it has been suggested that the country is becoming a 'country of chaebols and conglomerates' like South Korea. The military-owned Koryo Airlines now produces processed foods such as cola and canned goods, and operates a taxi service in Pyongyang (competing with seven other companies for fares in the city). A conglomerate called Naegohyang, whose true owners have yet to be identified, not only produces cigarettes for domestic use in North Korea, but also exports them to Iran under the brand name "Morning." The company also owns a baking company, and produces feminine hygiene products and sports clothing. ... There are no credit cards yet, but several banks are competing for debit card services. A company called 'Star' has also emerged in the cell phone service market, competing with Koryo Link." (Daniel Tudor et al, 2017, North Korea Confidential, Biabook Press, pp. 8-9, quoted from the preface of the Korean translation) "The state-owned stores failed to operate normally, and small merchants, who eventually became 'money lords,' invested in them, giving rise to 'quasi-private enterprises,' a variant of the market economy. ... Of course, they cannot run the stores under their private names, so they put their names in the state institutions paying a certain fee. The money lords are responsible for the production and sale of goods, the hiring and firing of employees, etc. Profits are also taken by the money lords. ... The money lords of quasi-private enterprises have now gone beyond investing in state-owned stores, and are directly connected to the foreign-currency-earning agencies to supply goods to the jangmadangs. Their expertise in the entire process of receiving and releasing goods, bookkeeping, financial statistics, and transportation is at the level of 'enterprise management' beyond 'merchandising'." (Joo Sung-ha, 2018, Encyclopedia of Capitalism in Pyongyang, Bookdodoom Press, p. 44, no foreign translation published) The ruling bureaucracy has benefited from both profits from the formal economy and profits from the informal jangmadang in the form of bribes. These profits have been distributed according to bureaucratic status that is linked to control over the black market and jurisdiction over public-private partnerships and foreign trade. As a result, the ruling bureaucracy has been the group that has benefited most from the expansion of the market economy. "After taking power, Kim Jong-un abandoned market controls. Instead, he reoriented his policies toward deregulation and the promotion of jangmadangs. As a result, the North Korean market has become frighteningly large and sophisticated in its division of labor. Like the trade officers, the money lords of the jangmadangs also contribute a certain amount of money to the state in the name of the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il Funds and other support projects, thus earning the title of 'hardworking heroes.'" (Joo Sung-ha, 2018, Encyclopedia of Capitalism in Pyongyang, Bookdodoom Press, p. 36, no foreign translation published). "If you count the people who make money from real estate, it's all the high-ranking cadres of the central party. But since they can't do it, their wives make the moves, and their wives put forward another smart guy. To build an apartment, you have to get seven stamps of approval, and the bribes for each one are huge. You can't get a good site unless someone in power is involved, and the cadres who receive the money take care of everything behind the scenes." (Joo, Sung-ha, 2018, Encyclopedia of Capitalism in Pyongyang, Bookdodoom Press, p. 30, no foreign translation published) From within the official bureaucracy, directly or indirectly, a group of emerging capitalists called the "money lords" ("donjoo") has emerged. They have not been separated from the existing bureaucracy but, as in the USSR and China, have emerged under its aegis and as an organic part of it. Alongside the bureaucracy as a "collective capitalist" serving "accumulation for accumulation's sake" that emerged in the old bureaucratic state capitalism, an emerging capitalist group organically linked to it has emerged in the expansion of the market economy. In North Korea, however, these two groups have become completely intermingled and formally indistinguishable. This is because the money lords, who operate under the complete control of the traditional bureaucracy, are either a direct part of the traditional bureaucracy or at least closely connected to it. When the bureaucratic state-capitalist system revealed its decisive limitations during the famine, the ruling group's way out was to acquiesce the market economy to spread. Since then, the informal market economy, such as jangmadangs, has provided the solution to the survival problems of the masses that the formal system could not. By creating and encompassing emerging capitalist groups, the bureaucracy has monopolized the fruits of market economy expansion and maintained its cohesion. However, this expansion of the market economy came at a time when North Korea was facing severe international isolation due to the collapse of the USSR and the reform and opening up of China. North Korea's ruling group sought to normalize relations with the United States, as China and Vietnam had done during their transitions to market economies, in order to ensure the regime's security and gain economic support. To bring the United States, which has been consistently hostile to North Korea, to the negotiating table, North Korea played the nuclear card. 5) Nuclear Armament as a Brinkmanship Bargaining Tool to Ensure the Security of the Bureaucratic Regime After the US Forces Korea deployed nuclear weapons in South Korea in 1958, North Korea consistently called for "making the Korean Peninsula a nuclear-free peace zone." In 1991, the US military withdrew its nuclear weapons from South Korea, and in 1992, the governments of North and South Korea adopted the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. However, after the Joint Declaration, which realized its long-standing claims for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, North Korea began a nuclear development policy toward nuclear armament. The collapse of the USSR in 1991 had a profound political and military impact on North Korea. The North Korean regime, which had built a shield against US aggression under the military umbrella of the USSR, was forced to seek its own military survival strategy in the face of the USSR's collapse. Forced to rule out the real solution of revolutionary unity of the working class in North and South Korea because of its anti-working-class nature, the North Korean bureaucratic ruling class pushed its adventurist gambit to even greater extremes. The solution it sought was a policy of nuclear development. In the early to mid-1990s, the North Korean government pursued its nuclear program, seeking military security guarantees and significant economic assistance from the United States and South Korea in exchange for abandoning it. Walking a tightrope, the North Korean ruling group tried to choose the most beneficial option in terms of regime protection. The key card in the game, of course, was to push the accelerator on the nuclear program as hard as possible to raise the stakes. But the North Korean bureaucracy was unable to extract sufficient commitments from the United States. For the United States, which had cemented its position as the sole dominant power in global capitalism after the collapse of the USSR, North Korea's nuclear card was not seen as serious. At that time, North Korea's nuclear armament was a plan and a rhetoric, not a reality. Moreover, the United States wanted to use North Korea's threat of nuclear development as a rationale for building a Missile Defense system. In the end, the 1994 Agreed Framework signed in Geneva between the United States and North Korea did not work out and was then abandoned. The deal was not struck. However, the North Korean bureaucracy's options were extremely limited. This had a lot to do with the desperate need to find someone to blame for the famine that swept through the country in the mid-to-late 1990s. Positioning US aggression, including the economic blockade, as the sole cause of the famine was an essential ideological tool for the North Korean bureaucracy to absolve itself of responsibility. The famine became one of the decisive factors that forced the North Korean bureaucracy to press the accelerator on its nuclear adventurism for the time being. Meanwhile, in the context of the widespread spread of market economies from below after the famine, the formal transition to a market economy and the reforms that were to accompany it could have seriously threatened the dominance of the North Korean bureaucracy. The North Korean ruling system operated through a strong policy of control and an anti-American ideology, which could have been significantly weakened by reform and opening up. The North Korean bureaucracy therefore sought to follow the example of China in the 1970s and Vietnam in the 1980s, which normalized relations with the United States before reform and opening up to ensure the security of their regimes. (However, the United States, which had actively pursued normalization with China and Vietnam to isolate the USSR before 1991, had little interest in normalizing relations with North Korea now that the USSR had collapsed. Rather, the United States, which desperately needed virtual enemies to keep its vast military complex running after the fall of the USSR, wanted North Korea to remain one of its few adversaries.) On the other hand, for the North Korean ruling group, nuclear development had a greater strategic value beyond its military implications. It could be used as a bargaining chip to secure full economic support from the United States through the big deal. As such, nuclear development was an adventurous bargaining chip sought by the North Korean ruling class as a way out of a regime that was no longer stable by conventional means. Having already lost the ability to stop the spread of the market economy, having lost confidence in the bureaucratic state-capitalist system, and having become the biggest beneficiaries of the expansion of the market economy, they were ready to take even more drastic steps. Eventually, in the early to mid-2000s, the North Korean bureaucracy came to the disastrous conclusion that, in order to bring the United States to the negotiating table, it had to push the accelerator of its nuclear armament harder and harder and reach a level that would actually put pressure on the United States as quickly as possible. Achieving a nuclear arsenal capable of striking the US mainland as quickly as possible became the motto of the North Korean bureaucracy. Most of the society's surplus began to be devoted to nuclear development. North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2003, and conducted its first nuclear test in 2006, formalizing its nuclear development program, followed by a total of six nuclear tests through 2017. In November 2017, North Korea officially declared the "completion of nuclear armament" after successfully test-firing an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-15, demonstrating the potential to strike the US mainland with a nuclear weapon. North Korea's completion of its nuclear program finally led to serious nuclear negotiations with the United States, centered on the 2018-19 summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. For the North Korean ruling class, the key to negotiating a nuclear deal with the United States was to obtain firm guarantees that the regime would remain in power, along with massive economic support to back it up. But the United States, suffering from chronic economic decline, could no longer afford to provide that kind of support, nor did it have the incentive to make significant concessions. The core of the US government's approach to negotiations with North Korea was simple. It was to realize US strategic interests on a global scale. During the Trump administration, when the US-China confrontation began in earnest, these strategic interests centered on gaining the upper hand in the imperialist competition with China and encircling it. For the United States, the strategic formation for encircling China in the North Pacific already existed through the US-Japan-ROK alliance, and the benefits of adding North Korea to it were not attractive. Rather, it was preferable to use North Korea's nuclear capabilities to raise military tensions on the Korean Peninsula and use them to increase the military buildup of Japan and South Korea, while combining the military assets of US forces in Japan and South Korea to encircle China. The 2016-18 deployment of THAAD in South Korea, which actually targets Chinese military power under the pretext of responding to North Korea's nuclear program, was part of this strategy. If anything, the de-escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula could have been an obstacle to the strategy of militarily encircling China and the military rearmament of Japan. The United States wanted to achieve one of two things in the negotiations. The first was to leave North Korea's nuclear arsenal alone, but to keep it at a level that would not threaten the US mainland by preventing further nuclear development under the pretext of negotiations. By keeping only South Korea and Japan in range, the United States would use North Korea's nuclear arsenal as a lever to strengthen the US-Japan-ROK military alliance and keep military tensions on the Korean Peninsula high to pressure China from time to time. The other was to strike a deal with North Korea if it was willing to dismantle its nuclear program and become a fully pro-American state. This, however, was on the condition that the economic support for North Korea would be borne entirely by the South Korean government. North Korea had no reason to accept such a deal. Although it had devoted an enormous portion of its social resources to its nuclear program, the deal would have little to show for it. Moreover, for North Korea, abandoning China and embracing the United States was not an easy choice. Given North Korea's geopolitical position, severing economic ties with China would be a huge risk. The best strategy for North Korea's rulers was to engage in tightrope diplomacy between the United States and China to ensure the regime's security and to gain support from both to rebuild the North Korean economy. (This tightrope diplomacy strategy by North Korea was exemplified by the fact that in 2018-19, in addition to two summits with Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un had five summits with Xi Jinping in China and one summit with Vladimir Putin in Russia.) In the end, the deal between the United States and North Korea fell through. The adventurist tactics of using nuclear development as a lever to maintain the North Korean regime further weakened the unity of the workers and people of the Korean Peninsula and increased military tensions throughout East Asia. As North Korea's nuclear program expanded, the far right in the South gained ground, Japan's military rearmament and the US-Japan-ROK military alliance grew stronger, and the international unity of the working class weakened. Also internally, the military squandering of social resources has made life more difficult for North Korean workers and people. 6) The War in Ukraine and the Building of the China-Russia-DPRK Alliance In the end, the nearly 30 years of US-DPRK nuclear negotiations remained in the same place, repeating a series of partial agreements and breakdowns. North Korea completed its nuclear program, but it still had no security guarantees or economic support from the United States. However, the upheaval in the world situation that came with the war in Ukraine opened up a new space for North Korea. Since 2019, when the Trump-Kim deal collapsed, the international situation has changed dramatically. The hegemonic confrontation between the United States and China has intensified, the unipolar US-centric order has faltered, and the multipolar tendency to challenge US hegemony has intensified. Against this backdrop, the confrontation between the West and Russia erupted into a war in Ukraine in 2022. Russia's strategic defeat in the early stages of the war in Ukraine forced Russia to rely on Chinese economic support, which paradoxically led to the establishment of a solid Sino-Russian alliance against the United States and the West. While the world is witnessing an intensification of the hegemonic confrontation between the United States and China, with small and middle powers not belonging to either camp seeking their own ways, the situation in East Asia around the Korean Peninsula is overwhelmingly dominated by the US-China imperialist confrontation. The rapid realization of a confrontational configuration between the two camps around the Korean Peninsula has opened up a new way out for the North Korean ruling group. North Korea's geopolitical position, with its role as a buffer for Sino-Russian imperialism against the US-Japan-ROK military alliance, has become increasingly important as the US-China hegemonic confrontation intensifies. If necessary, North Korea can be used as a proxy in a war against the US imperialist camp to protect the Sino-Russian homeland, and its military might alone can be of great value in protecting Sino-Russian imperialism in Northeast Asia. In this regard, North Korea's nuclear arsenal could now be a great advantage for China and Russia. Indeed, China and Russia have consistently opposed further sanctions against North Korea in the UN Security Council since 2020 (as opposed to until 2017, when they actively supported sanctions against North Korea's nuclear program). Moreover, the productive capacity of North Korea's military industry in terms of conventional weapons is an irresistible temptation for Sino-Russian imperialism. In fact, North Korea is supplying a large amount of artillery shells and missiles to Russia, similar to South Korea being the largest supplier of artillery shells to Ukraine in the Western world. North Korea's abundant mineral resources and floating ports have also made it important to the Sino-Russian imperialist camp in the process of reorganizing global supply chains. North Korea's bureaucratic ruling class can now count on significant external support through its alliance with China and Russia. Taking its place in the Sino-Russian supply chain would offer North Korea the possibility of economic breathing space. This shows the paradox of the US-China imperialist confrontation for global hegemony. The US-China hegemonic confrontation, which has sharply escalated since the Trump administration, has lowered the value of North Korea for the United States but raised it significantly for China. This trend is driving the North Korean bureaucratic ruling class deeper and deeper back into the Sino-Russian embrace. With the war in Ukraine as a turning point, North Korea has been able to break out of its long isolation since the early 1990s and build a China-Russia-DPRK alliance. The North Korean ruling group will now seek to survive under the economic and military umbrella of the China-Russia-DPRK alliance, not on its own. (China has not yet officially confirmed the China-Russia-DPRK alliance. This has led some observers to believe that China may be uncomfortable with the rapid development of Russia-DPRK relations. But they overlook the important fact that since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, a strong Sino-Russian alliance has been forged with China in a superior position, even though China has not officially supported Russia in this war. China's strategy is to build and strengthen the China-Russia-DPRK alliance as quietly as possible so as not to give the United States an excuse to strike back.) North Korea now has the backing of Sino-Russian imperialism, as opposed to the extreme isolation it faced from the 1990s until recently. Its economy is also improving as economic trade and assistance with China and Russia expand. Confident, North Korea has responded to joint US-Japan-ROK military exercises with aggressive military actions since the second half of 2022. Since the end of 2023, North Korea has also issued aggressive rhetoric, characterizing the relationship between the two Koreas as that of "two hostile belligerents" and announcing its readiness for "a major event that will pacify the entire territory of the Republic of Korea with nuclear weapons." With the acquiescence of China and Russia, North Korea's nuclear program will become bolder. Of course, it's not impossible that North Korea could try to negotiate with the United States again in the future. However, the chances of reaching an agreement would be much lower because the United States would have to pay a much higher price. In any case, there is only one key factor that governs the ever-changing policies of the North Korean bureaucracy: the survival, stability, and prosperity of the North Korean bureaucracy around the hereditary supreme leader. However, the escalating US-China imperialist hegemonic confrontation, which is beginning to determine the world situation today, will be a force stronger than any subjective will of the North Korean bureaucracy and will plunge the Korean Peninsula and East Asia into turmoil. The intensifying contradictions of the global capitalist system, expressed in the confrontation between the US and Chinese imperialist camps, and North Korea's adventurist nuclear program, will accelerate the war clouds over the Korean Peninsula, which will inevitably lead to a major war. 7) For a Socialist Korean Peninsula The intensification of the imperialist hegemonic confrontation between the United States and China in East Asia will inevitably lead to a huge imperialist hegemonic war. The international unity of the working class is crucial to transform the imperialist hegemonic war into a revolutionary civil war of the working class. The unity of the working class on the Korean Peninsula against the imperialist hegemonic war is the starting point. This is the only way to save the workers and people of North Korea from the threats of US imperialism and the South Korean far right. But the North Korean ruling bureaucracy has no will to go there because it is the ruling class that exploits and oppresses the working class. Unable to choose the path of international unity of the working class, the real way out is closed to the bureaucracy. Therefore, it has no choice but to resort to adventurist gambles, such as the expansion of its nuclear arsenal. Despite the dizzying array of policies pursued by North Korea's ruling bureaucracy, the consistent goal running through them is the maintenance of the ruling system. Whether it is the preservation of a bureaucratic state-capitalist system, the full embrace of a market economy, or some combination of the two, all economic policies are based not on the cause of so-called "socialism" but on the need to stabilize the ruling system and maintain its authority. If this need is met, they are willing to accept any economic system, and in any economic system, the fruits will be attributed to that very ruling bureaucracy. Likewise, its nature as a system of exploitation and oppression of the working class will remain the same. The same goes for foreign policy. Foreign policy is guided by a single practical objective: the maintenance of the North Korean ruling system. There is another point of clarity. The North Korean bureaucratic ruling system and US imperialism are diametrically opposed to each other, but they are two heads sharing one body, the global capitalist system. The two ruling systems fight each other to the death, but they can be friends at any time, and they have a symbiotic relationship in which each provides the other with the basis for its existence and the legitimacy of its rule. The US policy of containment and threats against North Korea gives the North Korean bureaucracy impunity for its adventurist military policy and nuclear armament. Conversely, North Korea's nuclear policy provides a rationale for US aggression against North Korea, the US-Japan-ROK military alliance, and the rise of the far right in South Korea. In this respect, the threat of an attack on North Korea by US imperialism and the South Korean far right is an important driving force that sustains the North Korean bureaucracy. Therefore, the struggle against the North Korean bureaucracy and its nuclear policy must be accompanied by the struggle against the attack of the US imperialism and the South Korean far right on North Korea. And vice versa. The only way to save the workers and people of the Korean Peninsula from the great catastrophe looming over the Korean Peninsula and East Asia is a socialist revolution on the Korean Peninsula. This revolution can only be pursued through the unity of the working class for peace and liberation. The only alternative is an internationalist alliance of the world working class, not a China-Russia-DPRK alliance or a US-Japan-ROK alliance. A socialist system, not a bureaucratic state-capitalist system in North Korea or a private capitalist system in South Korea, is the only alternative. Only workers' revolutions in both the North and the South, not nuclear adventurism, can realize true sovereignty for North Korea. "Turn the imperialist war into workers' revolution!" "For a socialist Korean Peninsula!" [Chapter 4] Towards Building an International Workers’ Solidarity in East Asia Against Imperialist Hegemonic Confrontation and Spreading Wars 1) International Workers' Solidarity Against the US-China Imperialist Hegemonic Confrontation The deepening capitalist crisis has intensified the competition and confrontation between the imperialist powers, culminating in the confrontation between the United States and China for global hegemony. With the world increasingly plunged into a vortex of imperialist wars since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the working class must respond to the imperialist hegemonic confrontation and spreading wars with an international workers' solidarity struggle based on "revolutionary defeatism." Clarifying that the confrontation between the United States and China is an imperialist hegemonic confrontation is essential for understanding and projecting the situation. The view of some "leftists" who see China as a socialist or workers' state and a progressive force against U.S. imperialism is not only a serious misreading of the current world situation, but also a grave error in that it ignores the vast numbers of workers and people inside and outside China who are exploited and oppressed by the capitalist power of the Chinese Communist Party. On the other hand, the view that China is capitalist but not imperialist fails to fully understand the nature of the US-China confrontation as an imperialist hegemonic confrontation that is bound to escalate into sharp conflicts and wars as the capitalist crisis deepens. While China is not yet a comparable adversary to the United States in many respects, it has emerged as the next great power in terms of economic strength, military power, and geopolitical influence, and it aspires to replace the United States as the world's leading superpower in the future. China has become the largest importer of raw materials from and the largest exporter of goods to most of the Global South, and is rapidly becoming the largest exporter of capital to a growing number of countries. In addition, China's claim to 90% of the South China Sea and its bullying of weaker states in Southeast Asia are blatant manifestations of its imperialist expansionist policies. China's rise and aspiration for global hegemony is a classic example of capitalist imperialism in that it is driven by the tendency that high capital accumulation inevitably leads to surplus capital exports and geopolitical expansion. Meanwhile, Russia, as a military imperialism (one that lags behind in capitalist development but has significant military power and an expansionist policy), is once again playing a secondary (but leading in terms of intensifying the confrontation) role in the imperialist hegemonic confrontation centered on the capitalist imperialisms. Even in World War I, when the most advanced capitalist countries - Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States - as capitalist imperialisms confronted each other for the imperialist world hegemony, Russia played a role in the imperialist hegemonic confrontation as a military imperialism. In the current imperialist hegemonic confrontation, which is centered on the rivalry between the United States and China, Russia is again playing a similar role as a military imperialism. In particular, Russia is playing a leading role in the escalation of inter-imperialist conflicts and wars by waging a proxy war against the US-NATO alliance in Ukraine. Of course, along with identifying China and Russia as imperialisms, we also clearly recognize the enormous crimes that Western imperialism, today led by the United States, has historically committed and continues to commit. Western imperialism has perpetrated hundreds of years of enormous oppression and expropriation against the Global South, and continues to commit countless crimes today, both inside and outside of its imperialist states. In particular, Western imperialism, above all the United States, continues today to support Israel's genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Western imperialism, led by the United States, is the main culprit in bringing capitalism to this point. Meanwhile, the very fact that China is challenging US global hegemony makes another war for imperialist global hegemony an inevitable prospect. The process of determining whether China can overtake the United States and become the world's strongest power will not be a peaceful one. Although a war for imperialist global hegemony may not be imminent, it is an inevitable reality that the war is getting closer and closer. Since both China and the United States are suffering from serious crises, whichever side is pushed into a decisive crisis first in the future is likely to be the provocateur who pulls the trigger. However, since both the United States and China are facing serious crises, and many factors of the crises are intertwined, it is also likely that they will move toward war provocations at about the same time. The position of the working class in the face of the imperialist hegemonic confrontation between the United States and China should be international workers' solidarity based on "revolutionary defeatism" that does not support either imperialist power but seeks to turn the imperialist war into workers' revolution through the defeat of both. This position must be applied to the factional confrontation between the US-led alliance and the China-led alliance. 2) How to Confront the Threat of Imperialist Aggression: International Workers' Solidarity, Not Nuclear Armament In the imperialist era, the relations between the countries are manifested in two forms: on the one hand, the hegemonic confrontations between the imperialist powers and, on the other hand, the aggressions and oppressions of the imperialist powers against the weaker nations. Today, the imperialist aggressions and oppressions against the weaker nations are still going on in many parts of the world, and the workers and people of the weaker nations are suffering the most. The working class should strongly support the resistance of the workers and people of the weaker nations against the imperialist aggressions and oppressions. Since the armistice in the Korean War in 1953, the United States has constantly threatened imperialist aggression against North Korea. Even after the end of the Cold War, the United States reneged on the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework and continued massive war exercises and sanctions against North Korea. In 2002, George W. Bush's State of the Union address to Congress publicly targeted North Korea by labeling it an axis of evil along with Iran and Iraq. Even in 2023, the United States, along with Japan and South Korea, conducted several large-scale joint military exercises against North Korea. We strongly condemn US imperialism's massive war exercises and sanctions against North Korea and call for international workers' solidarity struggle against them. However, it is not the reactionary system or regime of North Korea that we defend against US imperialism, but the workers and people of North Korea. In particular, we oppose the nuclear armament of the North Korean regime, which seriously hinders the international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity of the workers. The mass struggle of the workers and people in international solidarity is the only way to expel imperialism and realize peace on the Korean Peninsula. Before the transition to a market economy began in the 2000s, the existing North Korean system was bureaucratic state capitalism. Without a workers' revolution like Russia's in 1917, or even a peasant revolution like China's around 1949, North Korea had a Stalinist system implanted from above by the USSR-backed Kim Il-sung regime in the late 1940s. The North Korean bureaucracy, which monopolized privilege and wealth in the bureaucratic state-capitalist system, collectively played a role as the de facto capitalist class, exploiting and oppressing the working class. In North Korea, as in the Soviet Union and China, the bureaucratic state-capitalist system, in which workers' democracy and self-management were crushed, operated as a bureaucratic command economy that had nothing to do with a planned economy, and over time, due to its inefficiency, eventually fell into a state that could not guarantee even the basic survival of the workers and people. In North Korea, as in China, the desire of the workers and people to escape hunger and poverty was the most decisive driving force behind the restoration and expansion of the market economy from below (replacing the bureaucratic command economy that had failed to ensure even basic survival). (Of course, in both China and North Korea, the expansion of the market economy, while reducing absolute hunger and poverty by expanding the size of the economy, has led to greater disparity and inequality between the rich and poor.) North Korea's bureaucratic state capitalism, which not only exploits and oppresses the working class but also fails to ensure the basic survival of the workers and people because of its bureaucratic inefficiency, has nothing to do with socialism. It is also absurd to call North Korea's bureaucratic state-capitalist system a "workers' state" when there has never been any form of workers' revolution and the working class has never been the owner of state power, workplaces, and society. The task of the working class against the bureaucratic state-capitalist system should be to overthrow it through workers' revolution, just like normal capitalism. Then to build a workers' state that advances toward true socialism that abolishes all exploitation, oppression, and discrimination, a system in which the working class is the real owner of state power, workplaces, and society. While in the past, under bureaucratic state capitalism, the North Korean regime was a power of bureaucrats as a collective capitalist class, now, in the transition to market capitalism, it is a composite capitalist power that includes both traditional bureaucrats and emerging capitalists. It is equally clear that today's reactionary North Korean regime is also not worth defending by the working class. The reactionary nature of the North Korean regime is also expressed in its choice of nuclear armament as a means of confronting the threat of US imperialist aggression. What makes nuclear weapons crucially different from conventional weapons is that they are indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction that target civilian populations. The atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 killed 210,000 people and left a horrific legacy for hundreds of thousands and their descendants. North Korea's nuclear armament poses a threat of indiscriminate mass destruction to the workers and peoples of South Korea, Japan, and the United States, and thus has a very negative impact on building international workers' solidarity with them against the threat of US imperialist aggression. Just as we support the resistance of the Palestinian people against Israeli oppression but oppose the indiscriminate attacks on civilians by Hamas, we support the resistance of the North Korean workers and people against US imperialism but oppose the nuclear armament of the North Korean regime that poses the threat of indiscriminate mass destruction. The North Korean regime's nuclear armament is also contrary to its past claims. Nuclear weapons were first deployed on the Korean Peninsula in 1958 by US forces in South Korea. As of 1991, 100 US tactical nuclear weapons were deployed, including being mounted on F-16 fighter jets based at Kunsan Air Base. Throughout this period, North Korea consistently called for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. In 1980, it issued a joint declaration with the Japanese Socialist Party on the "Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," and in 1985, it joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), calling for "the Korean Peninsula to be a non-nuclear peaceful zone." The US military's nuclear weapons were withdrawn from South Korea in 1991. A major factor was the changing world situation. Following the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the USSR from 1989 to 1991, the United States negotiated with Russia to take a series of actions (the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives) to reduce tactical nuclear weapons. This included the withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons deployed in South Korea. In December 1991, upon completion of the withdrawal of US tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea, the South Korean government declared the "absence of nuclear weapons on the territory of the Republic of Korea." The governments of North and South Korea then agreed to a "Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," stating that they would "not test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use nuclear weapons," which was formally put into effect at a high-level meeting in Pyongyang in February 1992. The withdrawal of US tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea and the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula were not only due to changes in the international situation. This is evidenced by the fact that a significant number of US tactical nuclear weapons remained in Europe. "In 1991, the United States had nuclear weapons deployed in eight countries - Belgium, Britain, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, West Germany, and South Korea, ... only the nuclear weapons deployed in South Korea were fully withdrawn. ... Why was the complete withdrawal of nuclear weapons only in South Korea? ... The fact that nuclear weapons were completely withdrawn only in South Korea suggests that nuclear weapons security issues stemming from South Korea's domestic political instability and international security threats may have been an important consideration in the US decision to withdraw its nuclear weapons." (Hong Jung-jae, 2017, Analysis of Factors for the Withdrawal of Nuclear Weapons Deployed Abroad, Master's thesis, Seoul National University, pp. 27-28) When the United States withdrew its nuclear weapons prior to the return of Okinawa to Japan in 1972, and when it withdrew its nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1991, US policy decisions were clearly influenced by the strong anti-war and anti-nuclear movements that had developed in Japan and South Korea in earlier periods. In Japan, a powerful popular struggle against the US-Japan Security Treaty and the US military bases on Okinawa in 1959-70 was led by the student and labor movements. In South Korea, which had been stifled by a long military regime, anti-war, anti-nuclear, peace, and reunification demands erupted in tandem with demands for democracy beginning in 1986, mainly in the student movement, and spreading to the democratic trade union movement after the Great Workers' Struggle of 1987. However, North Korea, which had previously called for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, ironically pursued nuclear armament after the joint declaration of denuclearization. In 1994, North Korea and the United States signed the Geneva Agreed Framework, which promised North Korea's denuclearization in exchange for diplomatic relations and the provision of alternative energy by the United States, but it was never fully implemented and was officially abandoned in 2002. North Korea then withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2003 and conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. North Korea followed up with atomic bomb tests in 2009, 2013, and 2016, and hydrogen bomb tests in 2016 and 2017. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), nine countries in the world possess nuclear weapons as of January 2023: Russia (4,489), the United States (3,708), China (410), France (290), and the United Kingdom (225); the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Pakistan (170), India (164), Israel (90), and North Korea (30). Some argue that North Korea's nuclear armament should be defended as a necessary right of self-defense against US imperialism. Considering that Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, which did not have nuclear weapons, were destroyed by the United States, North Korea's nuclear armament is a necessary right of self-defense. But this argument is blind to the fact that Vietnam, which had no nuclear weapons, won its war of national liberation against the United States, and that the USSR, which had a huge nuclear arsenal, collapsed on itself. The key to Vietnam's victory over the United States was its ability to sway American workers and youth with the cause of national liberation (represented by the strong will and precious sacrifice of the Vietnamese people) and to turn American society upside down, pushing the war to an unsustainable crisis point. But North Korea's nuclear armament does the opposite, maximizing the rationale for war. If war is "the continuation of politics by other means," then North Korea's nuclear armament is based on bad, reactionary politics. It is not nuclear weapons that can truly guarantee North Korea's independence, but the international solidarity struggle of the workers and people against imperialism and war, and the right politics to make that possible. The working class in South Korea must organize a broad international solidarity struggle with the workers and people of North Korea and the world (including Japan, China, Russia, and the United States) for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea, the realization of a peace system and free movement on the Korean Peninsula, and the abolition of all nuclear weapons in the world (especially in the United States, Russia, and China). 3) International Anti-imperialist and Anti-war Solidarity of the Workers Against Both the US-Japan-ROK Alliance and the China-Russia-DRPK Alliance. When the configuration of imperialism vs. weaker nations is drawn into the imperialist hegemonic confrontation to become a collateral part of it (as the war in Ukraine has shown), the working class must respond by centering on international workers' solidarity based on revolutionary defeatism. A war for global hegemony between the United States and China would most likely be fought primarily over Taiwan. Whoever wins the conflict over Taiwan will have a decisive advantage in the Asia-Pacific region, which in turn will have a decisive impact on the overall confrontation for global hegemony. However, if there is a war over Taiwan, or if the conflict escalates, the Korean Peninsula will inevitably be deeply involved. A war between the United States and China over Taiwan would be like a world war because it would determine the direction of global hegemony. The United States would try to actively use the US-Japan-ROK alliance in this war, while China would try to expand the front by using the China-Russia-DPRK alliance to disperse the power of the US-Japan-ROK alliance. When the front is expanded as both the United States and China desperately mobilize their resources, the first point should be the Korean Peninsula. Therefore, the Korean Peninsula is becoming the second most affected region after Taiwan in the imperialist hegemonic confrontation between the United States and China, and this trend will be intensified in the future. The Korean Peninsula has long been a space of large-scale military confrontation since the Korean War, as evidenced by South Korea and North Korea becoming powerful ammunition suppliers for NATO and Russia, respectively, in the war in Ukraine. In addition, the Korean Peninsula is now becoming the site of a sharp confrontation between the imperialist camps, US-Japan-ROK vs. China-Russia-DPRK, with the United States and China at the center. The emergence of the China-Russia-DPRK alliance on the other side of the strengthening US-Japan-ROK alliance, especially after the war in Ukraine in 2022, marks the end of the period since the early 1990s when North Korea was isolated even from China and Russia and practically alone in facing the threat of US imperialism and the transition to a period when North Korea has the strong backing of China and Russia. Thus, the configuration of US imperialism vs. weak North Korea is being sucked into the configuration of the confrontation between the imperialist camps and becomes a secondary factor. With the US-Japan-ROK vs. China-Russia-DPRK confrontation now engulfing the Korean Peninsula, our response should focus more on organizing international workers' solidarity based on revolutionary defeatism against the hegemonic confrontation between the imperialist powers with the US and China at the top, than defending the North Korean workers and people against US imperialism. As the US-China imperialist hegemonic confrontation is materializing as a confrontation between the US-Japan-ROK alliance and the China-Russia-DPRK alliance over the Korean Peninsula, the working class of South Korea must build an international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggle with the working class of East Asia and the world as soon as possible. 4) Towards an International Anti-imperialist and Anti-war Solidarity of the Working Class in East Asia The imperialist hegemonic confrontation is a product of the greed of the capitalist class to maintain and expand its wealth and power endlessly. The capitalist class tries to compensate the declining rate of profit due to the decay of capitalism by exporting surplus capital and over-exploitation, and the imperialist powers representing the interests of the capitalist class have been competing for the expansion of their spheres on a limited planet, clashing with each other and eventually going to war. In these clashes and wars of the imperialist powers for the greed of the capitalist class, workers and people have been killed on the battlefield and deprived of their livelihood and rights. But just as capitalism cannot function without an exploited and oppressed working people, imperialist wars cannot be waged without the participation of the working people. In order to mobilize the workers and people for the imperialist war, the capitalist class spreads chauvinist ideology and demonizes its opponents. The workers and people, captured by the chauvinist ideology of the capitalist class, find themselves in the miserable position of pointing guns at their equally exploited and oppressed sisters and brothers for the benefit of the capitalist class that exploits and oppresses them. The way forward for the working class is exactly the opposite. As the capitalist class escalates the war crisis by strengthening imperialist military alliances, the working class must organize international anti-imperialist and anti-war mass struggles across national borders. We must organize working class resistance from within the imperialist powers and their allies that are fomenting the war crisis to create ruptures in their systems. We must organize anti-imperialist and anti-war mass struggles on a massive scale, based on international working-class solidarity, to block and stop the imperialist war and turn it into a workers' revolution. Unfortunately, the workers' movements in East Asia as a whole are in a very fragile state today. The South Korean workers' movement has been the strongest in the region in recent decades, but today it suffers from narrow trade unionism, bureaucratization, and reformism. The Japanese workers' movement has been severely weakened since the 1980s and has not recovered. In China, regime repression has prevented the formation of an independent workers' movement, and the Taiwanese workers' movement has not been able to overcome its fragility. In North Korea, the most severe regime repression has prevented any elements of an independent workers' movement from emerging. However, the accumulated contradictions of capitalism over time have fundamentally imprisoned the lives of workers and people throughout East Asia. Capitalist "economic miracles" throughout East Asia have led to stark disparities between rich and poor and chronically precarious work. The deepening tensions and war crises caused by the imperialist hegemonic confrontation could, on the one hand, strengthen the far right and lead to the rise of fascism, but on the other hand, it could also be a trigger for the massive expression of the accumulated suffering and anger of workers and people throughout the region. Building international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggles is the only way for the working class in East Asia to respond to this urgent challenge. Even if the movements begin with small participants, they have the potential to erupt into massive workers' struggles. The international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity of the working class in East Asia could ultimately be realized through the international solidarity among the anti-imperialist and anti-war workers' movements built as large mass movements in each country. However, since the workers' movements across the region are in a very weak state at the moment, we need to actively prepare for the eruption of huge mass movements, by growing the anti-imperialist and anti-war workers' movements under the leadership of the socialist organizations in each country on the one hand, and by developing the exchange and solidarity among the socialist organizations in the region on the other hand. The growth of the anti-imperialist and anti-war workers' movement is inseparable from the overall growth of the workers' movement as the subject of the class struggle. An international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggle of the working class can only emerge from the self-organization and struggle of the working class from below for its rights and liberation, only from a far-sightedness beyond economism and reformism, and only from a militant and revolutionary dynamic against the repression of capital and state power. [Chapter 5] How to Build an Anti-imperialist and Anti-war Workers' Mass Struggle in South Korea? 1) Criticism of the Positions of the Political Forces Within the Korean Workers’ Movement (1) National Liberation faction The National Liberation (NL) faction, which constitutes the majority of the South Korean progressive movement, sees China and North Korea as a kind of socialist states and as part of the anti-imperialist camp fighting to defend their revolutions against imperialist encirclement. This perception misleads the confrontation between the imperialist camps as "the struggle of the anti-imperialist camp against the imperialist camp", the struggles of the working people of these countries as "counterrevolutionary riots", and nationalist-capitalist mobilization ideologies such as "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" and "Socialism of Our Style (North Korea)" as liberation ideologies, to block the international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggle. It is necessary to liquidate their fictitious "anti-imperialist camp" theory and revive socialism from below. The argument of the NL faction boils down to the defense of a particular state (North Korea) and camp (the China-Russia-DPRK). It is irrelevant to the essence of socialism as the self-liberation of the working class. Their "anti-imperialist camp" theory prevents the internationalist revolutionary movement from advancing from below and rationalizes the possession of nuclear weapons of mass destruction and the buildup of armaments, reinforcing negative public perceptions of socialism and exposing the entire movement to anti-communist attacks. The pro-China, pro-DPRK line is also the source of the NL faction's pursuit of the popular front strategy. The idea of forming a popular front government in partnership with the liberal capitalist party to defend a particular state (North Korea) has itself stunted the development of the Korean workers' movement and subordinated it to the liberals. The nationalists who control the majority of the Korean workers' movement have routinely allied themselves with the liberal capitalist party, the Democratic Party of Korea, in key elections under the guise of "critical support," and have extended the line of class collaboration in the trade unions. This is nothing more than a repeat of the history of the Stalinist USSR, which subordinated the revolutionary movements of other countries and the Comintern to the defense of itself. According to the "anti-imperialist camp" theory of the NL faction, the antipathy of the people towards the "anti-imperialist camp" of China and North Korea can be explained only by the ignorance of the masses, i.e. the acceptance of the black propaganda of the imperialist powers by the masses of "neocolonial" Korea. The label of "socialist state" for China and North Korea is a fallacy. The "neocolonial" label for South Korea is also a fallacy. It is also a fallacy to attribute public antipathy to China and North Korea solely to the ignorance of the masses. The pro-China, pro-DPRK line of the NL faction isolates and weakens the anti-imperialist and anti-war movement. (2) Stalinist Left Similar to the NL faction, the Stalinist left, which is only a tiny part of the Korean workers' movement, sees the world according to an "anti-imperialist camp" theory. They consider North Korea, China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and other countries in conflict with the United States and the Western imperialist bloc as an "anti-imperialist" bloc. According to them, North Korea is a socialist country struggling under the siege of the US imperialist forces. Similarly, China is not capitalist, let alone imperialist, and Russia is a neo-colony that is far from being capitalist or imperialist. Based on this position, they argue that North Korea's nuclear armament is justified as a measure of self-defense against US imperialism. They see the war in Ukraine as Russia's self-defense against NATO's eastward expansion. In the so-called "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics," they see nothing wrong with the consolidation of Xi Jinping's monopoly of power, the intensification of the mass repression and surveillance system, and the capital-export imperialism centered on the "Belt and Road Initiative." They do not support the popular resistance within the so-called "anti-imperialist camp", such as the Hong Kong democracy movement, the Myanmar uprising, and the Iranian hijab protests, and they see imperialist forces involved in these movements themselves. Of course, they are completely silent about why China, a socialist country, is so keen on free trade with imperialist powers, or why Russia wanted to join NATO until the early 2000s. The NL faction, which deeply embodies parliamentarism through its Progressive Party, refrains from making explicit statements because it knows that arguments based on the pro-China, pro-DPRK line and the "anti-imperialist camp" theory will not help it win seats and because it has faced state repression such as the dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party. But the small Stalinist groups, which have little influence in the real movement, are more openly stating such arguments. Recently, they also praised the Niger coup force as an anti-imperialist force against French imperialism. As the struggle between the imperialist powers intensifies, their misleading perception based on the "anti-imperialist camp" theory will intensify. (3) Recognizers of the US-led world order The Justice Party, the People's Solidarity for Social Progress (PSSP), and the "Center" faction in the workers' movement criticize the China-Russia-DPRK bloc from the standpoint of the US-led world order. In particular, the PSSP criticizes Russia's invasion of Ukraine from the perspective of a "rules-based international order". It assumes that the US-led liberal world order is the only possible order today and says that we should find possible institutional solutions within this framework. The same perspective is applied to other issues, including the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, the Taiwan Strait issue, and the Korean victims of forced labor. Under the stipulation that the US-led world order is the only possible order, they present the reservation of the status quo of the liberal world order as their only alternative. In fact, they are representing the positions of the US and Korean ruling classes within the movement and suppressing the development of class struggle against imperialism and war. Their assimilation into the existing system has been rapid and will only accelerate as the struggles between the imperialist powers intensify. 2) The Reunification of the Korean Peninsula as a Result of the Workers’ Revolutions in Both Koreas Based on the International Anti-imperialist and Anti-war Solidarity Struggles in East Asia The state of division of the Korean Peninsula strengthens statism, militarism, and anti-communism to suppress the workers' struggles. In this sense, the reunification of the Korean Peninsula is the task of the working class. The question is how and what kind of reunification is to be achieved. Reunification is impossible as long as the confrontation between the imperialist powers around the Korean Peninsula persists. Since the division of the Korean Peninsula is the result of the imperialist world order, the reunification of the Korean Peninsula will be achieved as a result of the struggle of the workers and people of East Asia against the imperialist world order. We seek the reunification of the Korean Peninsula from the standpoint of the working class, rejecting the liberal absorption attempts and nationalist illusions of "one state two systems." Avoiding all demands and movements for reunification as a reverse bias to liberal or nationalist theories of reunification is an act of self-abandonment of the anti-imperialist struggle. Recognizing that reunification is possible only as a result of workers' revolutions in the two Koreas based on the struggles of the working people from below, we must expand the struggles for the abolition of the division system on the Korean Peninsula under the banner of the mass struggle program. We seek the reunification of the Korean Peninsula from the standpoint of the working class, rejecting the liberal absorption attempts and nationalist illusions of "one state two systems." Avoiding all demands and movements for reunification as a reverse bias to liberal or nationalist theories of reunification is an act of self-abandonment of the anti-imperialist struggle. Recognizing that reunification is possible only as a result of workers' revolutions in the two Koreas based on the struggles of the working people from below, we must expand the struggles for the abolition of the division system on the Korean Peninsula under the platform of socialists for the workers’ struggle. 3) Struggle Against the US-Japan-ROK vs. China-Russia-DPRK Military Alliances and Large-Scale War Exercises The US pivot to Asia has strengthened the US-Japan-ROK alliance. A naval base has been established on Jeju Island and a THAAD system in Seongju. The US military base moved from Yongsan to Pyeongtaek is the largest in Asia and the closest to China. With the acquiescence of the United States, Japan has proceeded with the neutralization of its peaceful constitution and its transformation into a belligerent state. Between Japan and South Korea, this was accompanied by the conclusion of negotiations on the issue of the comfort women of the Japanese army and the conclusion of the Agreement on the Protection of Classified Military Information. This sequence of events led to the Camp David Joint Statement of August 2023, a de facto declaration of military alliance between the United States, Japan, and South Korea. The statement reads "Our three countries announce today that we intend to hold annual, named, multi-domain trilateral exercises on a regular basis to enhance our coordinated capabilities and cooperation." In line with the stance of the United States and South Korea to complete the Extended Deterrence System, the deployment of US strategic assets (weapons that provide deterrence) on the Korean Peninsula is expected to be expanded. Strategic bombers and strategic nuclear submarines will cover the Korean Peninsula, and the THAAD missile defense system against China, Russia, and North Korea is likely to be expanded. US strategic assets were deployed 17 times in 2023 alone, including the first SSBN (nuclear-powered strategic nuclear ballistic missile submarine) to enter Busan in 42 years. Considering that the number of strategic asset deployments in 2022 was five, the risk of war on the Korean Peninsula is becoming routine. The US-Japan-ROK and China-Russia-DPRK military alliances are the rationale and lever that support each other. Therefore, the platform of the socialists for the workers' struggle against the US-Japan-ROK and China-Russia-DPRK military alliances aims at expanding the struggle against imperialism and uniting the workers and people of the North and South; The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the end of the Korean War and the establishment of a peace system, the dissolution of the US-Japan-ROK and China-Russia-DPRK military alliances, the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea, the guarantee of freedom of movement for the people of the North and South, and massive disarmament, including the abolition of all nuclear weapons in the world. 4) Struggle Against South Korea’s Military Expansion and Large-Scale Arms Production and Export The arms race in East Asia is intensifying, with the US pivot to Asia and the imperialist rise of China at its center. With China, Japan, North Korea and South Korea all undergoing major military expansion amid the tightening US blockade of China and the escalating Taiwan Strait crisis, the struggle against South Korea's military expansion is an important task for the working class in South Korea. Under the Moon Jae-in administration (2017-2022), military spending was in the mid-2% of GDP, up from the low 2% of GDP under the Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003), Roh Moo-hyun (2003-2008), Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013), and Park Geun-hye (2013-2017) administrations, and the Yoon Suk-yeol administration (2022-) is continuing this trend. With the revision of its defense strategy, the Kishida government has doubled its defense spending target from 1% to 2% of GDP, and if this trend continues, Japan will become the third largest military power after the United States and China. China is building up its military under its "Deam of Powerful Military" to build a world-class military surpassing that of the United States by 2049, and North Korea has enshrined its policy of strengthening nuclear armament in its constitution. The current arms buildup is not only deepening the war crisis in East Asia, but also attacking the right to survival of the working people, including cuts in social welfare budgets. Therefore, we should seek international solidarity against the arms buildup under the banner of dismantling the US-Japan-ROK alliance, dismantling the China-Russia-DPRK alliance, and opposing the arms buildup in East Asia. South Korea is deeply involved in imperialist wars, expanding its arms exports to countries in direct conflict, such as Yemen, Ukraine, and Israel. Specialized defense companies like Hanwha are rapidly growing into a state-sponsored military-industrial complex that encompasses land, sea, and air defense. This is an extremely dangerous situation, but one that is accepted by the majority of the population as a means of promoting national prestige. Calls for an end to arms exports should urgently be expanded alongside internationalist anti-imperialist and anti-war movements. 5) How to Overcome the Limitations of Narrow Trade Unionism and Economism in the Workers’ Movement, Where and How to Start? It is a fact that the majority of the Korean working class does not accept the anti-imperialist and anti-war struggle as its task. The reasons for this reality are as follows. First, due to the persistent state repression since the founding of the Republic of Korea, the Korean workers' movement has been under historical conditions that have made it difficult for it to take up political struggles, including the anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggle, as its own. In addition to public security crackdowns under the National Security Law, the Labor Law has strictly prohibited political strikes. Of course, the narrow trade unionism and economism of the Korean workers' movement are related to the weakness of the socialist political movement to raise political struggle as a task of the workers' movement, and the two are mutually reinforcing conditions. Secondly, the camp theories in the workers' movement are presenting wrong directions, conflicting with each other. The NL faction criticizes only the US-Japan-ROK military alliance based on the "anti-imperialist camp" theory and considers the China-Russia-DPRK alliance as an alternative force. Other factions based on the "rules-based international order" theory represent the efforts of the ruling class to strengthen support for the US-Japan-ROK alliance within the workers' movement. Under these conditions, the Korean workers' movement has not been able to expand its mass struggle against imperialism. The Korean socialist political movement must begin by correctly explaining the intensifying imperialist hegemonic confrontation and its dangers, and raise the issue of international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggle as a task for the entire workers' movement. We must take the initiative to practice internationalism, such as solidarity with the Palestinians, and work hard to explain in detail how the war in Ukraine, the war crisis in the Middle East, the crisis in the Taiwan Strait, and the arms race are related to the struggle for the right of the working class to survive. In doing so, we must increase the number of workers and workers' organizations that see the anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggle as their task, and organize anti-imperialist and anti-war political strikes in conjunction with broader people's organizations.

2024-11-01 | 조회 19

Editor's Note: On Monday, 23 September, a public lecture and discussion was held at Korea University's Life Library on the topic of ‘One Year After the Genocide, the Tasks of Palestine Solidarity Movement in Campus’. In the first part of the lecture, Comrade Kilian Gremminger, an activist of the German socialist student organisation Waffen Der Kritik (Weapons of Criticism), a student at the University of Munich, spoke about the Palestinian solidarity movement on German campuses. we publish the script of speech here, with the consent of the speakers. 1. The Current International Situation Over the summer, we saw a certain lull in the protests worldwide and at the universities. This is partly due to the fact that many students are not there and no courses are taking place, but also to the international dynamics of the protest, which are always cyclical. At American and also European universities, actions are currently being planned for the start of the semester, so there could be more momentum again. This is also connected to the developments in the Middle East, of course. We see an intensified enforcement of the occupation in the West Bank, the massacres in Gaza continue, and Lebanon has increasingly become a war target of the Israeli government with the air strikes and rocket attacks. The international situation is contradictory. On the one hand, we see a general shift to the right, in many “liberal democracies” either far-right parties are in power or are driving other bourgeois parties forward, as is happening in Germany with the AfD. This is related to the ongoing economic crisis since 2008 and the intensification caused by Corona, but there are even more causes. At the same time, since 2022 we have seen a new dynamic in the class struggle, with progressive examples such as the mass protests in France against the pension reform. With Palestine, it also seems possible to connect parts of the working class more with political issues, so that they do not just fight for more wages. These can be starting points for combating the shift to the right. 2. The two waves of the movement In general, we can observe two waves of the worldwide Palestine movement from October 7 to the present day. The first wave begins soon after October 7 and is characterized by huge, very heterogeneous demonstrations on the streets. There are mass demonstrations in all parts of the world, in the USA, Latin and South America, Arab countries, and Asia. The protest initially has a humanitarian character, it is about making the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza visible, demands for humanitarian aid are made to their own governments. In addition, the Palestinian movement is trying to break the dominant narrative that the “conflict” began on October 7, without telling the story of the last 76 years, the Nakba and the illegal occupation. The protest is therefore humanitarian and civil, the protesters from trade unions, parties, students, migrants, pensioners are addressing their own governments as well as the UN and asking them to do something about the suffering. With the special exception of Germany, large parts of the climate and Black Lives Matter movements are also participating in the protests, so there is a certain natural connection between anti-colonial, anti-racist struggles and the climate crisis caused by capitalism. In Munich and other European cities where our organization is active, committees are also being set up to unite students for various actions. At the same time, there are already actions by the working class in the first wave at international ports, where there are blockades of arms deliveries. But at the beginning of the year, the situation changed, with a decision by the International Court of Justice providing evidence of genocide by the Israeli government against Palestinians in Gaza. However, since nothing happened as a result and the mass killings continued, clearly also targeting civilians in so-called “safe areas in Gaza”, more and more people lost faith in their own civil governments and in international institutions such as the International Court of Justice or the UN as a whole. For the movement, April 17 changed everything: a dozen courageous students at Columbia University in New York found the world's first Gaza Solidarity Encampment, facing massive opposition from police and university administrators. This repression directly triggers solidarity from parts of the university staff, who try to use chains to protect the camp and the students from eviction. In the following days, the action quickly spread to universities across the country, and at the end of April the spark also spread to European and German universities. The second wave was born and the students led the protest as the vanguard. In doing so, the students expand their program and criticize the complicity of their government with regard to arms deliveries, the lack of diplomatic attempts to suppress the movement, which they also relate to the universities. Imperialism does not stop at the university and expresses itself in research collaborations with Israel, through arms research and sometimes also direct participation in arms production. The students are fighting the university administrations and want to take back their universities, which must no longer be used to serve genocide. They are calling for a boycott of relations with Israel in scientific, political, cultural and military terms, but they are also calling for divestment, for the universities to open their books so that every student and employee can see where the money is going. In their protest, the students are objectively opposing imperialism; they are no longer acting as citizens, but explicitly as students, and are thus struggling for power and control at their own universities. These aspects, along with the expansion of the program, enable their vanguard character, which distinguishes them as pioneers in the protest against other sectors. 3. Three tendencies in the German movement The first tendency in the current phase is withdrawal or routinism. This phenomenon arises from the exhaustion of months of activity with very limited success. It shows itself in forms of repetitive protest, be they vigils, information stands or protest camps, which eventually run out of steam. We see this even in the initially explosive experiences in the USA, where camps like the one at Columbia are being rebuilt, but no new forms of action are being developed, and no attempts are being made to expand the movement to include larger sections of the population. Much of the focus is then on educating and informing passers-by, but less on attracting or activating new activists. This retreat into one's “own community” has political reasons, but of course it is also related to the objective conditions, that is, the stagnation of the protest cycle. Because we have to abandon the idea that we can create our own momentum at the local level, so to speak; our own activity and mobilization power depends to a large extent on the international situation. We call the second tendency symbolic radicalism. This tendency is currently most prevalent in the hard core of the movement and comes to expression again and again. In Germany, this tendency was most visible at the Berlin universities. We remember that windows and walls were smeared with symbols and slogans of resistance, and the activists even renamed the institute “Jabalia Institute”. I myself have great sympathy for the latter in particular, but these actions do not help us strategically. This tendency was born out of disillusionment with international, bourgeois institutions, which considers physical and highly symbolic resistance to be the only conceivable option. The logic here can be summarized as “if we can't influence power, then let them pay as much as possible for it.” Repression is accepted and stylized into a moral proof of militancy in the style of martyrdom. The fundamental rejection of legal forms of action and the focus on political vandalism are further defining elements. We are talking here about a “sectarian” tendency that declares the masses of students and the rest of the population “lost” and turns its back on them. The third tendency is the political expansion. Since October 7, this has been taking place in the form of committees at many universities and has, to a certain extent, already prepared the explosion in April and May; the already prepared structures could serve as springboards for the movement. The purpose of the committees was and is to overcome the isolation of students in a situation of anger and grief as well as fierce repression, i.e. a defensive situation. When you are on the defensive, you have to gather forces as broadly as possible in order to be able to strike back at some point. That is why unorganized first-year students without political experience found and find themselves in the committees, as do people who are close to political Islam or people like me who call themselves Marxists. Through these months of preparation, it was possible for us to occasionally become at least a thorn in the side of the university administration through protest camps and to expand our movement over the summer semester. But political expansion is above all about content. Not only has the movement put its solidarity with other anti-colonial struggles, such as in Sudan or Congo, on the agenda, but other forms of oppression are also being linked to the Palestinian question. A current example illustrates this. Originally focused on issues such as pinkwashing in Israel, the question of queer connection is expanding to larger parts of the movement, which we have seen in the discussions around the CSDs. The question of national liberation and anti-colonial struggle is thus linked to further forms of oppression, which sets a clear counterpoint to the conservative to Islamist parts of the movement. Our movement needs many people, but it also needs hard discussions about questions of oppression, which can also raise the question of the liberation movement of Palestine. As bad as the situation in Israel is for the queer community, we must not remain silent about the leadership of the resistance by Hamas. We unconditionally support the right to resist, but if the dreams of Hamas were realized, there would continue to be massive oppression of women, queers and other marginalized groups. 4. The Munich Palestine Camp The Munich Palestine Camp has been standing almost continuously since the beginning of May and is now probably the longest camp in the world. In Bavaria, we have a specific political situation, because the regional government has been consistently dominated by a right-wing conservative party since 1945, resulting in authoritarian tendencies such as border controls or an almost non-existent student co-determination at the university. Particularly in view of the repression against the camp and the student protests, the government has taken an initiative against the criminalization of students in order to be able to expel them from the university more easily for “anti-Semitic or extremist reasons”. At the same time, an initiative was launched while the camp was being set up that would establish a binding cooperation between the military and Bavarian universities. That is why we have formulated specific demands, such as: Bundeswehr out of the universities, universities should only conduct research for purely civilian purposes, or: an end to the criminalization of protest, for the full implementation of democratic freedoms such as academic freedom or freedom of assembly. Since several political events have been banned by the administration over the last few months, leaving almost no room for discussion of repression or the liberation of Palestine at the university, we demand a university under the control of workers and students, so that not a small minority can decide what is taught and discussed at the university. The last but very important element was the workers' initiatives that we founded at the camp. Because the workers are actually the class under capitalism that has the most political power in the fight against war, with blockades at the port or occupations of arms factories. In Germany, however, they are still very much controlled by the trade union bureaucracies, which follow a pro-Zionist line and try to keep any political demands regarding Palestine out. That is why we founded “Health not arms” and “Workers for Palestine” in order to build up a base of workers in the trade unions who would put pressure on the leadership. We did this, for example, with a petition from trade union members in solidarity with Palestine.

2024-09-26 | 조회 108

Since the October 7th surprise attack by Palestinian fighters in Gaza, Israel, with the full backing of the United States, has declared a brutal genocide against the Palestinian people. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has called up 300,000 reservists to wage a "ruthless war," and U.S. President Biden has repeatedly pledged full political and military support for Israel. We firmly demand that Israel and the United States immediately stop this unscrupulous and brutal genocidal plan. They call this attack as "unacceptable terrorism," emphasizing the large number of Israeli civilians attacked and killed in the Hamas-led attack. But Israel has routinely attacked and killed far more civilians over the past several decades, ousting, imprisoning, discriminating, and oppressing millions of Palestinians. The U.S. has also consistently supported Israel's systematic racism, characterized by violence and murder, for decades to use Israel as a tool to maintain its imperialist global hegemony in the Middle East and around the world. Israel and the United States have no right or justification to talk about "civilian casualties.” They are the ones who caused this tragedy. Look at their shameless hypocrisy as they talk about "civilian casualties" and then plot a "civilian genocide" of even greater magnitude! We fully support the right of the Palestinian people to revolt against national oppression. We also fully support their right to engage in armed struggle against the bayonets of their oppressors. However, we never agree with attacks and abductions of civilians. We clearly criticize the methodology of Hamas in this respect, but at the same time we firmly support the Palestinian people's right to resist against national oppression and their right to engage in armed struggle. What are the alternatives to end this tragedy? Neither "Zionism," which is obsessed with expanding settlements in hopes of driving out all Palestinians, nor "Islamic fundamentalism," which denies the very existence of Israelis and targets civilians, can end this tragedy. History has shown that the "two-state solution" of establishing separate states for Israelis and Palestinians will never work if Israel's oppressive rule remains in place. We believe that the only solution is a single Palestinian-Jewish socialist republic in which Palestinians and Jews live in equal and peaceful coexistence. Such a republic can only be realized by overthrowing the Israeli oppressive regime through working-class internationalism that transcends the ethnic barriers of Palestine and Jew. The suffering of Palestinians may seem far away, but it's all around us. Excavators manufactured by HD Hyundai Construction Equipment were used by the Israeli army to destroy Palestinian homes and buildings in the West Bank. The West Bank was seized from Jordan by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, and the eviction of existing residents from militarily occupied land and the resettlement of new residents is a clear war crime in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. Let's raise the voices of Korean workers and demand that HD HCE immediately end its war criminal business practices! In the face of tense developments that are shaking the world, we demand the following: = Israel and the United States must immediately stop their genocidal plans against Palestinians! = We fully support the resistance of the Palestinian people against national oppression! = Supporting the struggles of the peoples of the world against imperialist oppression, Let’s vigorously build international solidarity of the working class! 2023.10.10. March To Socialism.

2023-10-10 | 조회 330

The South Korean right-wing government, led by its president Yoon Suk-yeol, has been reinforcing a series of attacks on workers’ rights and unions in recent months. The government’s anti-worker and anti-union traits have been inherent since its inauguration last May. But they became blatant since successfully repressing truck drivers’ second strike last November to December, which demanded the enlargement of a standard-fare system that means a minimum wage for ostensibly self-employed truck drivers. The right-wing government's relentless attacks after that have made building a powerful general strike an urgent task for workers' counterattack. The right-wing government’s attacks on workers’ rights and unions In December, the government announced its intention to introduce a reactionary labor reform, including a measure to allow extending the working hours a week. According to the current labor law, the work week can’t exceed 40 hours. But if there is an agreement between the employee and employer, the work week can extend to 52 hours with 12 hours of overtime. And the law allows a flexible work system within six months, in which the work week can extend to 52 hours, 64 hours when overtime is added, in a specific week on the premise that the average work week doesn’t exceed 40 hours in the whole period. This government plans to extend the cap of the work week of a particular week in a new flexible work system. According to this government’s draft bill announced on March 6, the maximum work week in a certain week will be allowed up to 64 or even 80.5 hours if 11 consecutive hours of break time between work days are provided. The government plans to submit its draft bill to National Assembly around this June to July, while the center-right Democratic Party, the majority of parliament as the former ruling party, has not agreed on this government’s plan. On top of that, this government has been inflicting several attacks on workers' unions. The government is forcing unions to open their fiscal books publicly, especially to the capitalist government and audit specialists. The government's demand is based on a vague clause in the labor law about the supervisory right of government on unions in a very crucial situation, which hadn't been used for a long time by previous governments. There are two different types of unions in South Korea. The KCTU, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, was built in 1995 through the national unity of democratic unions, which mainly had been constructed based on each company as a result of the 1987 Great Struggle, which was a militant strike wave like an eruption of a volcano composed of more than 3,000 illegal strikes with 1.2 million participants within three months. Despite its bureaucratization, the KCTU still has some basic features as a democratic union. Fiscal transparency is one of them. The fiscal situation of the KCTU and its affiliated unions have been transparently shared with their members. But it is not the case for the FKTU, the Federation of Korean Trade Unions, which has been made up of totally bureaucratized unions filled with bureaucratic corruption since 1946. Given this situation, this government is utilizing the corruption of the FKTU to attack all unions, mainly targeting the KCTU. Against the intention of the government to undermine the fiscal independence of unions, the KCTU and its affiliated unions are rejecting the demand to submit their fiscal books to the authority. Also, this government is eagerly trying to demonize the KCWU, the Korean Construction Workers’ Union, and repress it. The KCWU is an affiliate of the KCTU and organizes around 80,000 workers in the construction sector, usually working under extremely unstable and dangerous working conditions. The KCWU has been using a tactic to demand construction companies to hire union members at a certain portion and has managed to change construction sites safer through its more than 20 years of struggles. However, this government defines KCWU’s demands as illegal threats and regards its struggles as the violence of gangster organizations. Especially the president, Yoon, called the KCWU ‘gangsters in the construction sector’ and ordered his government to eradicate the union from the construction sector on February 21. Against that, the KCWU held a national rally in Seoul with the KCTU, with more than 40,000 participants, on February 28. The reason this government’s attack focuses on KCWU first seems to have two factors. First seems a retaliation against KCWU, which most eagerly tried to organize a solidarity strike during the truck drivers’ strike in December. The second one looks like a preemptive measure to cope with a foreseeable situation where many construction companies go bankrupt due to the ongoing rapid downfall of housing prices with interest rate hikes, to make the workers burden the capitalist crisis without their union. A national rally in Seoul held by KCWU with the KCTU, with more than 40,000 participants, on February 28. (taken by Hankyoreh) Another attack of this government is to repress the KCTU and its affiliated unions using the notorious National Security Law. On January 18, the National Intelligence Service and police forcibly searched the offices of the KCTU and its affiliated union KHMU, the Korean Health and Medical Workers’ Union, based on a search and confiscation warrant for the alleged breach of the National Security Law of some union cadres. And on February 23, they searched the offices of the Gyeong-Nam chapter and Daewoo shipbuilding subcontracted workers’ branch of the KMWU, the Korean Metal Workers’ Union, which is affiliated to KCTU, likewise using the NSL. Forcible searches of the KCTU and its affiliates are the first after 2015. But forcible searches using NSL by NIS are the first after the 1996-97 powerful general strike against the labor reform and the law amendment to reinforce the former NIS. Backgrounds of the government’s attacks This president managed to be elected mainly thanks to the former government's failure. The former government was inaugurated in 2017 with big expectations and hopes of the ordinary people after the huge protests against the preceding president and impeachment of her. The former government tried to make itself up as something progressive, but it clearly served the interests of the capitalist class. A significant increase in the minimum wage had been one of the main promises in the presidential election of the former president, but the total increase in the minimum wage during the former government was smaller than the previous more right-wing governments. Furthermore, the former government reformed the law on the minimum wage to make almost all benefits added in the calculation of minimum wage, reducing many workers' real wages. The former government tried to be a mediator between the US and North Korea but did nothing except for just meeting both sides without any attempt to escape from the grip of the US, provoking North Korea's furious and aggressive responses. As soaring housing prices made ordinary people feel massive deprivation, the former government announced dozens of measures against realty speculation but always failed to confine housing prices because the measures were too trivial. The failure to stabilize housing prices was a decisive trigger to the collapse of the strong support for the former government. In other aspects, this president managed to be elected due to inciting and appealing anti-North Korean and anti-Chinese sentiments and the backlash against the feminist movement. He was elected with the smallest margin in the history of Korean presidential elections, and his party accounts for only a third of the National Assembly. To overcome such vulnerabilities, as a former prosecutor general, he has been utilizing direct or indirect threats based on prosecutors’ punishment power against political rivals. Also, he has been trying to mobilize strong support from right-wing forces. For that, his government has been strengthening the military alliance between US imperialism and South Korea. And it announced a measure to exonerate Japanese war-crime companies from a historical responsibility for forced labor during Japanese imperial domination of the Korean Penninsula on March 6, which was immediately praised not only by Japan but also by the US and even the EU as a good step for building solid relationships between allies. A series of blatant attacks on workers’ rights and unions are also for mobilizing strong support from right-wing forces and especially the capitalist class, who need more intensification of exploitation, given that Korean and global capitalism is heading into a deepening crisis. Building a powerful general strike is urgent! The right-wing government's attacks have angered many workers. The KCTU already passed a resolution for a two-week general strike in early July at its national representative assembly on February 7. But, given the government continues to accelerate its attacks, July would be too late for the workers to counterattack. The KCTU should build a strong general strike as soon as possible with urgent demands that include stopping the reactionary labor reform, crushing the repression against the unions, reducing the working hours to 30 hours a week (and redistributing all jobs to all workers, including the unemployed and underemployed), abolishing the National Security Law, rightful reparations from Japanese war-crime companies for forced labor during the colonial occupation, and nationalizing energy companies for energy price control and climate justice. For this, militant workers and revolutionary activists should organize active campaigns from below to call for building a strong general strike as soon as possible. Given the bureaucratized leaders of the KCTU are reluctant to head-on confrontations against the government, only can mobilizing the anger of ordinary workers and turning it into a strong desire toward a counterattack be the way to realize a powerful general strike by overcoming the barrier of bureaucrats. Overcoming narrow trade unionism is very important for building a strong general strike. In recent months, the president's approval rating has shown a tendency to go up every time this government steps up its attacks on the unions. That's not only because right-wing forces are mobilized but also because a not-so-small portion of ordinary workers are swayed by the government's propaganda because of their bad feelings about the unions. As of 2021, the unionization rate of workers in South Korea was 14.2%, and the figure was 46.3% in workplaces with 300 or more workers, but it was only 0.2% in workplaces with less than 30 workers, where about 60% of the total workforce is employed. However, for the past 20 years, most unions’ approach to this situation has been narrow trade unionism, in which unions focus only on the interests of their own members, seriously widening the gap in wages, working conditions, and job securities between regular workers in big companies and other workers. This wide gap allows the government's anti-union campaign to reach ordinary workers. Therefore, overcoming narrow trade unionism and restoring class-struggle unionism, which regards workers' unions as weapons of the working class in its class struggle against the capitalist class and was a strong tendency in the democratic unions for ten years after 1987, is crucial to the success of the workers' counterattack. Therefore, in order to make this general strike a decisive turning point for this, the demands for the vulnerable workers should be raised first, such as raising the minimum wage by 30%, recognizing the rights of subcontracted workers to negotiate with and strike against the main company, recognizing the rights of so-called self-employed workers and platform workers to negotiate with and strike against the real employer, and extending the prohibition of reparation for damages due to strike from legal strikes to all strikes. Making such demands become all unions' demands is also the task for militant workers and revolutionary activists to realize through assertive activities from below. Workers in South Korea have a historical tradition of strengthening their movement by organizing strong counterattacks against governments' harsh repressions. This was the way to build and defend the regional and national unity of democratic unions after the 1987 Great Struggle. This can also be the case at this moment. In particular, organizing a strong counterattack this year can be very helpful in reviving the workers' movement, which has been weakened in recent years by the illusion of the nature of the former government and the restrictions of COVID-19. In other respects, given that most of the older generation of the 1987 Great Struggle has been retiring, this struggle can be a good opportunity for the largely organized new union members since 2016, who make up about 36% of the KCTU's 1.1 million members, to organize a huge struggle and grow as a new protagonist of the Korean workers' movement. It will be of great significance in preparing the Korean working class for the great struggles and leaps against desperate attacks of the capitalist class in the coming deep capitalist crisis in Korea and worldwide.

2023-03-11 | 조회 166

The war in Ukraine and record-breaking inflation, these two events representing the world in 2022, represent that global capitalism is finally entering a new epoch. While by what name the new epoch will be called has not yet been known, its character is obvious. It is the epoch that the whole world will be covered with crises and wars, and so will have to be covered with revolution. For the last 30 or so years, what makes global capitalism maintain 'relative stability and peace' has been so-called 'globalization' and 'financialization,' combined with neoliberalism. But as globalization no more gets to function properly due to its inherent contradiction and financialization has accumulated its inherent contradiction too enormously, global capitalism is entering into a new epoch filled with a series of severe fractures and ruptures. This change that had been proceeding in a not-well-visible way finally began to unfold in a shocking way anyone could notice through the war in Ukraine and record-breaking inflation. The war in Ukraine As everyone knows, the war in Ukraine broke out as tensions and conflicts between the US-Europe imperialist camp and Russian imperialism finally blasted. But, in its background, the full-grown US-China supremacy confrontation was laid that globalization inevitably has induced. In the background that the US-Europe camp had been upgrading the level of geopolitical encompass endlessly to provoke Russia until the war erupted, there was today's world dominance strategy of the US intending to complement weakened economic supremacy by strengthening military supremacy. The basis that made Russia take the risk of invasion of Ukraine would have been the result of strategic judgment that now Russia also could come forward to enlarge its influence actively because the supremacy of the US is weakening with the rise of China. The war in Ukraine has shown that the confrontation between imperialist powers with the US and China at its peak is now starting to reach even military conflicts through proxy wars and local wars. The war in Ukraine has made the possibility a matter of hot concern worldwide that the US and China would engage in a direct military confrontation over Taiwan in the not-so-distant future. Given that the destined supremacy confrontation between the US and China continues in the future, the danger for the US and China to engage in military conflict over Taiwan will gradually increase. The danger of the Korean Peninsula to be fell into a place for another imperialist proxy war will also be the case. Record-breaking inflation The recorded inflation of around 10% in the US and Europe and several tens% in numerous third world countries are the first things in 40 more years since the stagflation swept away the 1970s. While there are various opinions on the cause of inflation, we can point out the rise of the real value of commodities due to the increase in the supply price, the rise of the nominal price of commodities due to the decrease in money value, and the rise of the prices of energy and foods brought about by the war in Ukraine and climate crisis as the causes. In the early stage of this inflation, 'the increase in the supply price' looked to happen due to the disturbance of supply chains mainly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. But as time has passed, other factors that are even much more structural have been pointed out. On the one hand, it is pointed out that as the 'inverse-globalization' current that goes against globalization has accumulated, the advantage of 'supply at the lowest unit price' brought by globalization has begun to diminish noticeably. On the other hand, it is pointed out that this is the result of having avoided industrial investment in even essential materials for the reason of low profitability, as the tendency to depend on financialization in coping with the decline in profit rate overall capitalist system has intensified. These two aspects suggest that this inflation was triggered by the results that globalization no more gets to function properly and financialization has made severe side effects. It is pretty contentious whether 'the decrease in money value' due to the expansion of the money supply also is the cause of this inflation. Especially the fact that there was no inflation after 2008, even though the US, Europe, and Japan carried out long-term quantitative easing for more than ten years, is presented as the principal basis for the objection. The hyperthesis that, even though too much money is supplied, money that is not necessary for commodity circulation is hoarded without being used and does not affect the price level is also presented. But when we look into history, we can find several cases where the expansion of the money supply was a key factor in inflation. Cases that led to hyperinflation were typical. Also, we need to recall that, in the 1970s' world-sweeping inflation, not only the oil shock but also the decrease in the dollar value as a key currency acted as leading causes. The decrease in the dollar value had been brought about as the US had over-supplied the dollar to cope with the Vietnam War, and then its effect had been amplified as the gold convertible system had been abolished. While it can't be said that the expansion of the money supply always (and in proportion to expanded quantity) causes inflation, it would be a more rational hypothesis that when the money supply exceeds a certain 'critical point,' it could decrease the money value by increasing the quantity of money actually used in commodity circulation and cause inflation. The facts below can be suggested as the factors that made the 'critical point' be exceeded; 1) Tremendous amount of money, more than the total of quantitative easing over the past ten years, was rapidly injected to cope with the COVID-19 crisis after 2020. 2) Different from the past when the effect of quantitative easing was focused on the asset markets such as stocks and real estate by supplying money into the bond market, after 2020, considerable money was paid to ordinary people and directly injected into commodity circulation. 3) The resistance force that deters the start of inflation was weakened because factors on the supply side also acted together. 'The rise of the prices of energy and foods' caused by the war in Ukraine and the climate crisis seems to will find its place when the war in Ukraine is over, and the production of grains in particular regions hit by the climate crisis is recovered. But what if the war in Ukraine is not easily over? What if another war breaks out in other strategic regions? What if the production of grains is disrupted in more and more regions each year due to the increasingly deteriorated climate crisis? 'The rise of the prices of energy and foods' may not be a simple temporary factor. Structural inflation and the direction of global capitalism If now-unfolding inflation is caused by structural factors in many parts, this inflation will inevitably continue for some time. At this moment, central banks around the world, including the US Fed, have been aggressively raising interest rates. This may ease inflation to some extent. But, if the policies are loosened, inflation will likely surge again like an extinguished fire comes to revive. Inflation inflicts considerable pain on workers and people by reducing purchasing power. Persistent inflation pushes workers and people so that they have no choice but to fight for survival constantly. This is why inflation has to be a severe headache for the ruling class as well. However, persistent inflation will also have a crucial meaning for the future direction of the overall capitalist global economy. As will be explained in detail later, ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing, which have been like a savior for global capitalism since 2008, can work effectively only on the premise that inflation does not occur. So the fact that inflation will inevitably continue for some time indicates that there will be significant changes in the unfolding features of the capitalist economy. Since 2008, the bubble of asset markets such as stocks and real estate has been a key instrument of offsetting the decline in profit rate overall capitalist system. Banks, the backbone of the capitalist economy, have gained more earnings from loans related to real estate and stock investments than industrial investments. The prices in asset markets, divorced from the real economy, rightfully have shown rapid decline signs periodically. But each time, interest rate lowering and quantitative easing have boosted the asset bubble again, playing a role of a solution. But now, central banks worldwide have been raising interest rates rapidly to control inflation, increasing the burden of repayment of debts of households, corporations, and governments accumulated on an unprecedented scale. And this, in turn, leads to a decrease in real estate and stock prices and a credit crunch in the bond market. What if central banks worldwide stick to interest rate raising to make this situation continue for some time? On the one hand, many household bankruptcies will happen with big plunges in real estate and stock prices. On the other hand, many corporation bankruptcies will happen with the widespread failures to extend debt maturities. And they will lead to explosive increases in bad loans, which will lead to bankruptcies of financial institutions, furthermore, a financial crisis. Therefore, central banks worldwide won't be able to continue raising interest rates. When there is a sign that inflation subsides even to some degree, they will not only hurry to stop raising interest rates but also carry out interest rate lowering and quantitative easing again, pursuing asset price escalation and debt enlargement. This is because only then will today's capitalist global economy, which is barely surviving by depending on financialization, be able to avoid sinking and continue to operate. The problem is, in that situation, whether inflation will subside quietly. What if various structural factors that caused this inflation remain still unresolved? It looks highly likely to do so. Then, interest rate lowering and quantitative easing by central banks worldwide will provide enormous energy to inflation, playing a role in provoking inflation to crazily hop around. If then, central banks worldwide will have to turn to interest rate raising to control inflation again, which will escalate the danger of a bubble bursting in asset markets and a financial crisis occurring. So it won't be long before they turn again to interest rate lowering and quantitative easing to avoid a bubble bursting and a financial crisis. But this time, inflation will be more rampant. Even if a catastrophic situation can be luckily avoided once or twice, as this vicious cycle continues, the explosiveness of a financial crisis and the wave height of inflation will become increasingly higher. After all, it looks very likely that global capitalism is heading to either a great financial depression or hyperinflation, or even both of them. Bourgeois economic analysts' views The fact that capitalism has entered a new epoch and that the global economy is likely to run into a catastrophic situation is expressed, to some extent, even in some bourgeois economic analysts' views. (Omission) The epoch of crisis, war, and revolution World war I broke out in 1914 as the result of more fierce concentration on a scramble for colonies by imperialist powers competing for supremacy, such as the UK, France, Germany, etc., to overcome economic damages after the severe global economic crisis in the early 1900s. World war II started in 1939 as the result of finally finding a solution to the Great Depression unsolved over ten years by imperialist powers competing for supremacy, such as the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, etc., in massive military spending expansion, the war economy, and even mass destruction and genocide. If the capitalist global economy increasingly approaches toward great financial depression and hyperinflation in the near future, this will more rapidly increase the intensity of conflicts between imperialist powers already reaching the stage of proxy wars and local wars. At this moment, we cannot predict the concrete features of the future. But it is clear that the upcoming epoch will inevitably be an epoch marked by crises and wars. In an epoch full of bankruptcies, unemployment, poverties, and wars, even to which climate disasters add, the working class worldwide will have no choice but to rise up with strikes, revolts, and revolutions, even for survival. This article is to explain overall backgrounds to help a more accurate understanding of the nature and meaning of the new epoch that can be summarized like above. For this, for example, answers to some following questions will be tried to suggest. If a transition to the new epoch is taking place now, what epochs have there been in the history of global capitalism? What are the factors that make epochs distinguished from each other in capitalism? How did the epoch of neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization that dominated global capitalism over the past forty years emerge? What inherent contradictions have operated, leading that epoch to end up? Finally, what is the position and implication of the new epoch in the history of global capitalism? <1> Factors that make epochs distinguished in the history of capitalism From its beginnings until now, capitalism has invariably been based on the endless exploitation of the working class. In addition, to divide the working class and sustain the exploitation system, it has continued oppression and discrimination against women, LGBTQ+, blacks and people of color, immigrants, disabled, etc. Furthermore, by absolutizing only the blind extended reproduction of capital, it has destroyed essential environments for human survival, such as the coexistence between nature and humanity or the harmony between urban and rural areas, to an irrecoverable degree. But capitalism has not always shown the same features. Just like a person has gone through the stages of childhood, youth, maturity, and old age throughout a lifetime, capitalism has also passed through several epochs that have been considerably distinguished from each other in the relation between capitals, the relation between capitals and states, the relation between states, the mode of combination between exploitation and expropriation, and the level of class struggle. It can be said that capitalism has passed largely through five epochs until now. The first is 'the epoch of free competition and bourgeois revolution' from 1776 to 1871. The second is 'the epoch of monopoly and full-scale imperialism' from 1871 to 1914. The third is 'the epoch of world wars, Great Depression, and workers' revolution' from 1914 to 1945. The fourth is 'the epoch of postwar boom and reformism' from 1945 to 1980. And the fifth is 'the epoch of neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization' from 1980 to recent days. (1) Long-term realization of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (Omission) Then, in the real history of capitalism, how has the tendency of the rate of profit to fall been realized? In this regard, An Argentinean, Esteban Ezequiel Maito, published a meaningful study result in 2014. It is an actual calculation of the average rate of profit in six core countries, including the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the Netherlands, from 1869 to 2010. The study result says that the rate of profit started above 40% around 1870, repeated to tendentially decline, and then reached 10-15% these days. (Omission) (2) Desperate policies to offset the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (Omission) The core policy that capitalist states pursue to offset the decline in profit rate has differed in each period. For example, from 1871 to 1914, capitalist states' key policy to offset the decline in profit rate was 'capital export to colonies,' and from 1914 to 1945, it was 'wars.' From 1945 to 1980, it was 'expansion of effective demand,' and from 1980 to recent years, it was 'neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization.' The core policies have had to be changed in each period because, after some time passed, due to accumulated contradictions, they didn't correctly act anymore, or the counter-effectiveness became very severe. (Omission) (3) The degree of deepening in the capitalist crisis (Omission) The accumulation of contradictions has not been confined to the economic aspects. Contradiction has also accumulated in social, political, and international aspects. The explosion of contradictions in those areas has also aroused decisive crises in the old accumulation system or capitalism itself. For example, 'capital export to colonies', the core policy to offset the decline in profit rate from 1871 to 1914, raised the conflicts between imperialist powers around the repartition of colonies, finally bringing about World War I from 1914 to 1918. And the economic contradiction accumulated in that period finally burst into the Great Depression worldwide from 1929 to 1939, and social, political, and international contradictions aroused by the Great Depression burst into World War II from 1939 to 1945. These show the big picture of capitalism's history. In the early phase, there is a period of growth with vigor. Then a period of contradiction accumulation with ostensible peace and stability follows. And then, when reaching a certain point, a period unfolds when, as accumulated contradictions explode, everything fiercely turbulences and collides with each other and so capitalism itself is decisively at stake. (Omission) (4) The mode of combination between exploitation and expropriation In the Marxist tradition, 'exploitation' means stealing surplus value created by workers within the capitalist production process. Whereas 'expropriation' means robbing or thieving someone's property outside the surplus value production process. The center of the capitalist production process is in organizing social production and, through that, exploiting surplus value. Enormously developed social production makes surplus value as enormous as its size. So the center of profits reaped by capitalists is based on exploitation. But the tendency of the rate of profit to fall makes capitalists endlessly crave additional profits based on expropriation to offset the tendency. (Omission) The mode of combination between exploitation and expropriation has repeatedly changed. When capitalists were able to earn profits smoothly, they relatively concentrated on exploiting surplus value. But when suffering from the decline in profit rate, capitalists more actively combined expropriation outside the surplus value production process to supplement reduced profits (or to offset a further decline in profit rate). The focussing point of expropriation has also changed. For example, while total plunder of colonies was at the center until the early 20th century, these days, financial expropriation is at the center. (Omission) (5) The degree of maturity in the revolutionary capability of the working class (Omission) The unity and class consciousness of the working class, and the extent of how mature its revolutionary capability is, affect the range and intensity of policies used by states to offset the decline in profit rate. More importantly, they decisively affect whether capitalism, in which contradictions finally explode, can revive with a young body and open another epoch by shaking off its contradictions considerably through harshly sacrificing workers and people. (Omission) The epoch of crisis and war bears the epoch of revolution. It is because horrible catastrophes of wars and great depression provide the urgent necessity and possibility for the workers' revolution. But the workers' revolution does not come true by itself. Only by building the revolutionary capability of the working class can we prevent capitalism, which has already fulfilled its historical vocation, from extending its lifespan at the expense of the working class and humanity through horrific barbarism. <2> Four epochs before the epoch of neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization How did 'the epoch of neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization' emerge? What inherent contradictions have made it end? What position and implication does the new upcoming epoch have in the whole history of capitalism? To answer these questions, we need to understand previous epochs. So let's briefly check the characteristics of the four epochs before the epoch of neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization around the contents necessary for understanding today's epochs. (1) The epoch of free competition and bourgeois revolution (1776-1871) (Omission) (2) The epoch of monopoly and full-scale imperialism (1871-1914) (Omission) (3) The epoch of world wars, Great Depression, and workers' revolution (1914-1945) (Omission) (4) The epoch of postwar boom and reformism (1945-1980) (Omission) <3> The end of the epoch of neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization As passing through the economic crisis of the 1970s, the profit rate in the overall capitalist system very severely declined, dropping to the ground. The capitalist class, which had repressed the worldwide uprising of the working class in the 1970s, has very aggressively pursued special measures to not only offset the decline in profit rate but even to raise it again since the 1980s. A set of measures that combine neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization dominated the world over the past 40 years. (1) Neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization that swept away the world since the 1980s Neoliberalism was the first measure that capitalist states pursued to offset the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and even raise the dropped-to-the-ground profit rate again. Neoliberalism, which encompasses specific policies such as mass layoffs, wage cuts, irregularization of the labor force, social welfare cuts, neutralization of labor unions, tax cuts for capitalists, deregulations, privatization of key industries, etc., to cut a long story short, puts its aim in strengthening the exploitation of workers as much as possible and giving all kinds of benefits to capitalists, artificially raising the profit rate of capital. Neoliberalism, which was through the experiment by Chile's military regime in the mid to late 1970s and inaugurated by conservative governments in the UK and the US in the 1980s at full scale, dispersed to the whole world throughout the 1990s. This especially accompanied the process that social democrat governments became the executors of neoliberal policies in many countries. In those cases, they often utilized the method that 'democratically' promoted neoliberalism based on labor-management-government negotiation. The result of neoliberal policies that forcibly decline the working and living standards of workers and artificially raise the profit rate of capital has been prominently represented, especially in the US. From 1979 to 2018, while the productivity growth in the US was 69.6%, hourly compensation growth was only 11.6%. In 2007, the real wage of the workers in the US was just 85% of that in 1974. Therefore, neoliberalism was considerably effective in the recovery of the profit rate but soon reached its limit. It was because of the contradiction that was inherent in neoliberalism itself. The more each corporation recovered its profit rate thanks to neoliberalism policies, the poorer workers became, and the bigger the gap between production and consumption in the whole society became. Overproduction that became increasingly serious led to structural sale slumps and made significant barriers to the recovery of profit rates. Additional measures were needed to complement the decisive limit of neoliberalism. So globalization and financialization were added. Globalization, which combines 'globalization of production' and 'globalization of markets,' accelerated from the mid-1980s and started to unfold in all aspects with the launch of WTO in 1995. Global FDI inflow to global GDP increased from 0.4% in 1985 to 5.3% in 2007. Global exports of goods and services to global GDP increased from 16.9% in 1986 to 31.2% in 2008. In particular, the transition to a market economy in China in the 1980s and the collapse of East European countries and the USSR in 1989-91 destroyed the Stalinist camp, contributing largely to integrating the world into a single supply chain and single market. The 'globalization of production,' which moved all or part of the production bases across borders to all corners of the world in search of cheap and submissive workers, contributed greatly to raising the profit rate of capital. Factory relocations to underdeveloped countries drastically decreased wage costs to the extent of even more than offsetting additional logistics costs. Threats of factory relocations became the most potent weapon of capitalists in developed countries to neutralize labor unions and compel them to retreat. 'Globalization of markets,' which integrated the world into a single market by breaking the trade barrier between countries, complemented the weakness of neoliberalism that increasingly enlarged the gap between production and consumption by dramatically expanding markets. Cheap imports, represented by Chinese products, made the workers in developed countries get by based on decreased wages, effectively blocking the wage decrease from leading to workers' struggles. Factory relocation worldwide largely changed the landscape of capitalism. Factories, which concentrated in the US, Western Europe, and Japan, moved toward Latin America, Eastern Europe, and East Asia and then rushed into China as their final destination. Global capitalism reorganized itself around two axes China's production and the US's consumption. Financial capital is originally capital that reaps earnings by receiving part of the surplus value acquired by industrial capital in the form of interests or dividends through loans or stock investments for industrial capital. While financial capital doesn't directly participate in surplus value production, it indirectly contributes to the surplus value production of industrial capital by collecting idle money in society and providing it to industrial capital. So interests or dividends are distributed to financial capital in return. However, if stock prices continue to sharply rise up, financial capital can earn even much more returns through the margin between the purchase and sale of stocks than interests or dividends. If even the middle class and the upper layer of the working class are attracted to participate in stock markets by arousing the illusion of speculative unearned income, stock prices must naturally rise for a while. Financial capital can reap additional earnings also through high-interest loans to stock market participants. Rightfully, stock prices that distant far from their real value must inevitably plunge someday. But, usually, big owners already realize margins before the plunge, and most of the losses due to the plunge are passed to small investors. Such financial expropriation can be used as a way to offset the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, but it has very large side effects. It is because when stock prices plummet, numerous people go bankrupt and, by the shock, even banks, leading to the overall economy immersing into a very tough situation. This was the case when the Great Depression began in the US in October 1929. When coping with the Great Depression in the 1930s, the US introduced various regulations on financial institutions like banks. The most important was the prohibition of concurrent business of commercial and investment banks, which prevented commercial banks handling deposits from participating in high-risk areas like stock investments. Such regulations, introduced to hinder the recurrence of something similar to the Great Depression, continued for more than 60 years until the late 1990s. However, the US broke up such regulations on a large scale in 1999. Representatively, the prohibition of concurrent business of commercial banks, insurance firms, and investment banks was abolished. It meant to open the way for inducing even small money owned by the masses into speculative and high-risk areas as much as possible. Like this, the process in which financial expropriation unfolds briskly under the active support of states is just financialization. Financialization, which became at full scale in the late 1990s, has been a device to supplement additional earnings by financial expropriation for capitalists who could not reap sufficient profits only with exploitation through surplus value production due to bottom-crawling profit rates in the overall capitalist system. Financial expropriation has not been confined to stock trades. Trades of corporations themselves to acquire corporations, raise 'values' through massive restructurings, and sell them again have also been an important area of financial expropriation. In the real estate market, something similar to the stock market has happened on a much larger scale. In this market, the size of mortgage loans is overwhelming, so financial institutions' earnings through them have been even more significant. In addition, the earnings from rising rents due to surging housing prices also have been considerable. As financialization expands, areas of financial expropriation have endlessly spread to the foreign exchange market, raw material market, futures market, and recently the cryptocurrency market. Financialization greatly expanded the financial sector. In 2006, while the global GDP was $51.8 trillion, the sum of stock markets and bond markets in the world was $119 trillion. In 2007, the money managed by hedge funds, which could be called the vanguard of financialization, was $10.1 trillion. In the UK, In 2007, while manufacturing industries employed 3 million, the financial sector employed 6.5 million. In the US, total financial institutions' assets to GDP soared from 110.3% in 1985 to 224.2% in 2007. In the US, as a result of combining globalization and financialization, while the share of manufacturing industries in GDP reduced from 25.6% in 1947 to 11.2% in 2009, the share of the sum of finance, insurance, real estate, and rental & leasing in GDP grew from 10.5% in 1947 to 21.5% in 2009. (Omission) (2) The 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession (Omission) The 2008 financial crisis was the biggest event after the Great Depression in the 1930s in the history of capitalism. With the risk of going bankrupt of major financial institutions in the US and even other countries in a row, global capitalism was on the verge of paralysis. Financial expropriation through the surge in real estate prices and predatory loans, which made 2 million households homeless, gave enormous earnings to capitalists. But it came back as a boomerang and pushed the capitalists' ruling system itself to just before catastrophe. Faced with the danger of the entire capitalist system's collapse, the capitalist class, which had been crying out neoliberalism and arguing 'leave it all to the market,' shamelessly provided astronomical bail-out money to financial institutions through states. According to a report by the Bank of England in November 2009, the bail-out money poured by the US, the UK, and Eurozone amounted to $14 trillion, accounting for one-fourth of global GDP in 2009. Banks were barely prevented from bankruptcies, but consumer markets in developed countries rapidly shrank. In just three months after the break out of the financial crisis, global production and trade were reduced by more than 30%. In particular, in China, 20 million jobs disappeared around export industries in only three months just after the financial crisis. This time, for an economic boost, governments around the world poured tremendous finance. While developed countries around the US promoted consumption mainly using subsidies and tax benefits, emerging countries around China mobilized massive civil engineering and construction projects. For two years after the financial crisis, finance poured by governments worldwide to stimulate economies was estimated to surpass $5 trillion. Meanwhile, central banks in major countries such as the US, Europe, and Japan implemented massive quantitative easing and ultra-low interest rates policies for a long time to boost economies. For example, the US Fed carried out three times of quantitative easing, a policy in which the central bank expands the money supply by purchasing bonds held by banks, on a scale of $3.6 trillion over six years from November 2008 to October 2014. And Federal Reserve maintained its standard interest rate, Federal Funds Rate, at zero (0.00~0.25%) over seven years from December 2008 to December 2015. Like these, by mobilizing unprecedented tremendous bail-outs and stimulation policies, capitalist states could prevent the 2008 financial crisis from developing into another great explosive depression, which is full of massive bankruptcies and unemployment like the Great Depression in the 1930s. But the Great Recession was unavoidable. According to the World Bank, the average growth rate of the world economy for 12 years from 2008 to 2019 was recorded at only 2.5%. This was much lower than the average growth rate from 1995 to 2007 at 3.4%, let alone the rate from 1961 to 2007 at 3.7%. Moreover, this figure was the result barely achieved by mobilizing for a long time astronomical fiscal expansion and unprecedented ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing for states worldwide to boost economies. In some parts, the period of the Great Recession showed remarkable growth and aggressive investments among big-tech corporations like Apple, platform corporations like Amazon, and so-called 'green' corporations like Tesla. However, in overall aspects, the period showed extreme investment avoidance phenomenon due to profit rates' inescapability from bottom-crawling in the overall capitalist system. One representative example that showed the investment avoidance phenomenon in the overall capitalist system was the expansion of 'share repurchase' in the US. Based on the Trump administration's policy that gave tax cut benefits to corporations retrieving their foreign investment back to the US, in the first quarter of 2018, US corporations retrieved $217 billion to the US, accounting for about 10% of total foreign investment money which is $2.1 trillion. However, only $2 billion was expensed on productive investment among $81 billion that the upper 15 corporations retrieved. Whereas, in the second quarter of 2018, the amount of share repurchasing by US corporations reached $150 billion which increased three times compared to the first quarter. That is, the most of foreign investments retrieved to the US were used in share repurchasing, which is for management right defending or stock price raising, instead of productive investment. The investment avoidance phenomenon largely affected also the direction of loans by banks. While commercial and industrial loans accounted for 25.0% of total credit provided by US commercial banks from 1970 to 1981, but only 16.1% from 2008 to 2019. Whereas, the portion of real estate loans increased from 19.1% to 37.0% between the same periods. (Omission) After all, the period of the Great Recession was not a process of going ahead toward a new boom by resolving contradictions that were generated in the capitalist accumulation system, but a process of going ahead toward a large-scale explosion by more accumulating and deteriorating contradictions. The accumulation and deterioration of contradictions unfolded in both aspects of globalization and financialization. (3) Reshoring, protectionism, and supremacy confrontation brought about by globalization Globalization was a very effective instrument in offsetting the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and even recover profit rates by making it possible for capitalists to force low wages both in developed and emerging countries. And it also functioned to block low wages from leading to workers' struggles by maintaining low prices. However, globalization, especially the 'globalization of production,' largely retreated through the Great Recession. Global FDI (net inflows) compared to global GDP, which started at 0.4% in 1985, reached 5.3% in 2007 as a result of a tendential rise, but then recorded 1.3% in 2020 as a result of a tendential decline. Global exports of goods and services compared to global GDP, which started at 16.9% in 1986, rose to 31.2% in 2008, but then tendentially declined, recording 26.3% in 2020. In large part, the ratio of FDI inflows compared to GDP in main countries and regions saw its figure decline in 2016-20 than 2006-10. Specifically, the figure declined from 1.9% to 1.5% in the US, from 5.8% to 1.9% in Eurozone, from 3.7% to 1.5% in China, from 2.4% to 1.8% in India, and from 3.7% to 1.4% in Russia. Some countries and regions, such as Brazil and Southeast Asia, showed somewhat different patterns, but the ratio didn't rise notably, even in these cases. The retreat of globalization was a worldwide phenomenon not confined to specific countries or regions. What made globalization retreat like this? It is because the contradiction inherent in globalization itself has created strong powers for inverse-globalization, such as reshoring, protectionism, and supremacy confrontation. In the early period of globalization, the reason capitalists in the developed countries moved production bases en masse to emerging countries was, first of all, remarkably low wages in emerging countries. However, the wage gap between developed and emerging countries reduced as time passed. It is because wages in emerging countries rapidly rose as unity and wage struggle of workers grew with industrialization proceeding. In particular, large-scale wage struggles in 2010 in China, which became the 'factory of the world,' were an important turning point. In addition, in developed countries, wages of new workforces in manufacturing industries considerably declined as the two-tier wage system spread on top of overall wage stagnation. The reduction of the wage gap between developed and emerging countries began to invoke doubts about the long-term benefits of production base movement to emerging countries when considering logistics costs etc. Roughly, with 2010 as the split point, many corporations in developed countries began to delay additional productive investment toward emerging countries and even take reshoring, which retrieves production bases in emerging countries back to developed countries. For example, in the US, in 2010-16, before the Trump administration, 438,000 jobs were already announced due to reshoring. Unlike that reshoring was a relatively quiet economic phenomenon, the rises of protectionism and supremacy confrontation were powerful political phenomenons shaking world order. Neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization reintegrated, in effect, the world into a single order by encompassing the collapse of the USSR and Eastern European and the transition to a market economy in China. And in reverse, such a single world order was a political basis for making it possible for neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization to continue smoothly. In particular, when the 2008 financial crisis broke out, the fact that governments worldwide cooperated closely with each other based on a single world order had a decisive role in preventing the financial crisis from going ahead to a great explosive depression and making it mitigated to the extent of the Great Recession. But globalization brought about protectionism and supremacy confrontation that shakes such a single world order from the bottom. In April 2009, when the second summit of G20 was held in London, leaders worldwide made an official resolution of the 'block of protectionism' for the joint response to the financial crisis. It was a commitment not to repeat the 1930s experience that countries worldwide fell into protectionism and largely exacerbated the Great Depression. But, workers and people in the US and Europe, devastated by neoliberalism and globalization and even experienced a more rapid setback in living conditions after the 2008 financial crisis, infused enormous energy into protectionist forces under the condition of the absence of revolutionary forces capable of leading them. Finally, in 2016, as Brexit was passed by a referendum in the UK and Trump was elected as president of the US, protectionism arose at the forefront of world politics and international relations. Protectionist forces' coming to power further accelerated the reshoring that had already unfolded. As the result of the Trump administration's policy to provide tax cut benefits to companies retrieving their foreign investments, 637,000 jobs were announced by reshoring in 2017-20. (As we saw earlier, even though most of the retrieved money was used in share repurchasing, such an extent of the result was produced.) Protectionist forces' coming to power also functioned as a political force to shake the world order. The 'America First' policy that Trump raised made significant fissures in the relations with not only China but also traditional allies in Europe. The rise to power of protectionism, which hates foreign countries and immigrants, powerfully inspired all kinds of far-right forces worldwide which hate social minorities. China, which had become the 'factory of the world' through globalization, has leaped to the extent of threatening the US's supremacy as the result of repeatedly rapid growth. The conflict between the US intending not to allow more chasing and China planning to reduce the time of chasing made the supremacy confrontation between them visible more early. In 1982, when reform and opening-up policy was in the early stage in China, China's GDP compared to the US's GDP was 6.1%. For a long time, this figure modestly increased, reaching only 12.7% in 2001, when China joined WTO. However, after that, in only 6 years, this figure doubled to 24.5% in 2007. And through the 2008 financial crisis, in only 4 years, doubled again to 48.4% in 2011. In addition, China's GDP began to rank second in the world surpassing Japan's in 2010. China's economic rise has invoked tension and confrontation between the US and China instead of their long honeymoon. In 2011, the Obama administration set the 'Pivot to Asia' as the top foreign policy of the US, which meant containment and siege against China of a 'potential threat.' Against this, China more strongly pulled the rein of chasing. In 2012, when China's GDP recorded 52.5% above half of the US's for the first time, Xi Jinping, who just rose to the General Secretary of the CCP, put forward the 'Chinese Dream' at the forefront, which was, in effect, the dream of China becoming the most powerful country in the world. Furthermore, in 2015, when China's GDP recorded 60.8% of the US's, China announced its 'Made in China 2025' plan, which intended to raise 10 core high-tech industries to the world's highest level by 2025. In 2018, when China's GDP recorded 67.7% over two-thirds of the US's, the confrontation between the US and China flared up into an all-out trade dispute. In July 2018, the trade dispute between the US and China started, after the first attack by the Trump administration, with giving and taking retaliation tariffs of 25% on imports worth $34 billion. In 2019, the US enforced retaliation tariffs on additional imports worth $300 billion and sanctioned Chinese high-tech companies including Huawei, and against those, China reduced importing agricultural products from the US. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the trade dispute between the US and China has continued. Through the trade dispute, the US expanded its tariff object range for Chinese imports largely expanded from 1.0% to 66.4%, and raised the average tariff from 3.1% to 19.3%. In 2019, the US could widen the GDP gap with China by using the trade dispute, but as China rapidly recovered its ability to cope, China's GDP reached 77.1% of the US's in 2021. The US's strong containment and China's vigorous chasing tell us that supremacy confrontation between the US and China will more and more inevitably intensify. Before 2008, globalization functioned as an effective instrument to complement the weakness of neoliberalism and offset the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. However, after 2008, as a result of the unfolding of the contradiction inherent in globalization itself, not only did its original function remarkably mitigate but also it ended up creating political forces of protectionism and supremacy confrontation, which shake the world order and deepen decisively the crisis of capitalism. (4) Financialization having headed toward a greater financial crisis Unlike the real economy, which was stuck in stagnation and low growth after the 2008 financial crisis, global stock and real estate markets hotly heated up centered on the US. Global equity market capitalization to global GDP, which was 115.5% in the 4th quarter of 2007, dropped to 54.6% in the 4th of 2008 through the financial crisis. But, after that, as a result of repeating tendential rises, it reached 128.1% in the 4th quarter of 2021 as a new peak. The figure at the recent peak was 12.6% points higher than before the financial crisis. It means that a giant bubble bigger than before the financial crisis was formed in global stock markets. The US stock markets show more dramatic figures. The US's equity market capitalization to GDP, which recorded 164.7% in the 1st quarter of 2000 and 142.6% in the 2nd quarter of 2007, plunged to 94.9% in the 1st quarter of 2003 through the dot-com bubble crash and 74.5% in the 1st quarter of 2009 through the financial crisis. After that, as a result of repeating tendential rises, it reached 211.4% in the 4th quarter of 2021. The figure at the recent peak was even 46.7% points higher than before the dot-com bubble crash, and even 68.8% points higher than before the financial crisis. In the US stock markets, a huge bubble, which is much bigger than before the dot-com bubble crash or the financial crisis, was formed. The US real estate market is also serious. The US's (S&P/Case-Shiller) home price index to consumer price index (for all urban consumers), which recorded 155.1% in May 2006, fell to 99.4% in February 2012 through the plunge of real estate prices and the financial crisis. After that, as a result of steady rises, it reached 178.1% in May 2022. The figure at the recent peak was 23.0% points higher than before the financial crisis. Even in the US real estate market, an enormous bubble considerably bigger than before the financial crisis was formed. In other countries, also severe levels of bubbles were formed. In June 2022, Bloomberg analyzed that real estate bubbles bigger than before the 2008 financial crisis were formed in 19 countries, including South Korea, among all OECD countries, based on the calculation of prices compared to rents and incomes. Before 2008, financialization was an important instrument for capitalists to reap additional earnings through financial appropriation, on top of super-exploitation by neoliberalism and globalization. However, the 2008 financial crisis proved that financial expropriation is a very dangerous instrument that could push the capitalist system itself to collapse. So it would have been a minimally rational choice for capitalists if they had maintained a distance from financial expropriation, at least for a while after the 2008 financial crisis. Just like they did for more than 60 years after the 1930s Great Depression. But, as we saw, financial expropriation unfolded at a bigger scale after 2008. And as a result, giant bubbles, much bigger than the 2000 dot-com bubble crash and the 2008 financial crisis, have been formed in global capitalism. What has made things become like this? To cut a long story short, it is because that capitalism has reached an extent where it can't exist without financial expropriation. Even though enormous neoliberal attacks poured globally to intensify exploitation for a long time, profit rates throughout today's capitalist system have not still escaped from the bottom. Moreover, globalization, which had largely been beneficial in intensifying exploitation, rapidly retreated after 2008. While the driving force of capitalism is the endless hunger for profits by capitalists, it has become impossible to satisfy their hunger for profits without massive financial expropriation properly. Now capitalism has reached a stage where it can't exist, without financial expropriation, in other words, without desperately pushing financial expropriation. The role of states in inspiring and supporting financial expropriation was decisive in the formation of much bigger bubbles in real estate and stock markets since 2008, which made financial expropriation unfold at a much grander scale. While there were various laws and schemes in different countries, the key was ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing. Major central banks, including the US Fed, began implementing ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing policies right after the 2008 financial crisis to recover real economies, which had been rapidly frozen due to the shock of the financial crisis. They were policies intending to supply sufficient money into the market for capitalists to make productive investments more easily. However, capitalists didn't actively make productive investments due to the bottom-crawling profit rates. After all, over-supplied money contributed more to raising stock and real estate prices. Anyway, for the capitalist class as a whole, that also was not bad. When capitalists couldn't gain sufficient profits through productive investments, it could be an excellent solution to supplement through financial expropriation. As this structure was fixed over time, ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing were de facto degenerated into instruments to support and raise stock and real estate prices. However, especially because stock bubbles fiercely ballooned, major central banks had to worry about another financial crisis bursting. As a result, major central banks carefully raised interest rates again and entered quantitative tightening. For example, the US Fed raised the federal interest rate by 2.25% points over nine times from December 2015 to December 2018 and reduced its asset by $700 billion from September 2017 to August 2019. Its ostensible reason was 'normalization due to gradual recovery of the economy,' but preventing the bubble from violent exploding by carefully letting off steam would have been included in the real reason. But the Federal Reserve couldn't let off steam sufficiently because only slight amounts of the interest rate rising and quantitative tightening made the US economy rapidly decline. The Federal Reserve was forced to resume interest rate lowering and quantitative easing in September 2019. In that situation, as the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, an unprecedented crisis phase unfolded temporarily. For example, the US saw 20 million jobs disappear for only a month in April 2020, which was three times of 6.7 million lost jobs for a year from September 2008 to August 2009 when the 2008 financial crisis broke out. According to IMF, from April 2020 to March 2021, governments worldwide spent $9.9 trillion to cope with the pandemic, and central banks poured $6.1 trillion into the market. This $16.0 trillion injected by governments and central banks worldwide amounted to 18.8% of the global GDP in 2020. To cope with the economic crisis induced by the pandemic, the US Fed once again maintained its interest rate at zero from March 2020 to March 2022. Also, it carried out a much bigger quantitative easing of $4.8 trillion. At this time, the effects of the policies were similar to the past, but the extent of the effects was much more intensified. Once again, the zero interest rates and tremendous quantitative easing contributed much more to boosting stock and real estate prices than activating productive investment. As a result, giant bubbles of unimaginable levels have been formed in the global stock and real estate markets. <4> Overturn the epoch of crisis and war into the epoch of revolution! As we have seen so far, as profit rates in the overall capitalist system couldn't have escaped from the bottom even though repeated neoliberal offensives, as globalization had increasingly retreated, and as financialization had run toward a much bigger financial crisis, the epoch of neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization had been barely continuing. However, in 2022, the war in Ukraine and record-breaking inflation inflicted a strong shock, ending the old epoch and opening the door to a new epoch. So, what epoch will the new epoch be? Above all, as economic contradictions accumulated in the previous epoch explode, it will be an epoch when capitalist economic crises fiercely erupt. In addition, based on geopolitical contradictions accrued in the last epoch, it will be an epoch when conflicts and wars between imperialist powers become everyday life. Furthermore, as economic crises and wars interlock together to worsen situations continuously, it will be an epoch when the working class and humanity are increasingly immersed in endless miseries. But precisely because of those things, it will be an epoch when class struggles resurrect and develop and when the prospect of a workers' revolution to abolish capitalism emerges as an urgent task and concrete possibility once again, not a vague prospect in the future. (1) A new world order that the supremacy confrontation and protectionism are making On what background did the war in Ukraine, which became the turning point for the new epoch, start? And how is it changing the world? To understand these problems, we need to understand the changes in the power relations among countries over the past 30 years. When we look into changes in the portion of each country in global GDP in 1991-2020, we can get some results similar to what is commonly presumed. The most prominent change is China's sparkling rise and Japan's rapid drop. Also, we can see overall declines in European countries such as Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, etc. The US rose, then largely fell through the 2008 financial crisis, after that, recovering again. We can also find tendential rises in India, Brazil, and Russia. When we see changes in the portion of each country in global exports of goods and services in 1991-2020, China's remarkable growth is most visible again. Existing developed countries such as the US, Germany, Japan, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, and Spain have commonly experienced tendential declines. On the other hand, emerging countries such as South Korea, Singapore, India, Mexico, Russia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Turkiye have shown steady growth trends, although not as much as China. When we see changes in the portion of each country in global Foreign Direct Investment (outflows) in 1991-2020, we can see growths in China, Japan, Germany, Canada, South Korea, and Russia. And we can see drops in the US, France, the UK, and Switzerland. On the other hand, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, India, and Turkiye have continuously trivial levels. In the portion of FDI, we can confirm a greater tendency toward certain countries than exports. Also, we can identify each country has different trends within existing developed countries and do so within emerging countries. However, when we see changes in the portion of each country in global military expenditure in 1991-2020, we can see considerably different situations from previous parts. Even though the US's decline and China's rise intercrossed, the gap is still pretty big. And Saudi Arabia, India, and Russia, which failed to make their existence prominent in economic indicators, ranked from 3rd to 5th in 2016-2020 after steady growth. On the other hand, the UK, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, and Spain showed steady declines. South Korea, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Turkiye, and Iran maintained similar levels. The comparison between global portions in some main aspects of each country in 2016-2020 shows where the power relations among countries, which put together economic and military powers, have reached these days through changes of the past 30 years. The US still occupies the position of the world's most powerful country but depends more on military power than economic power. China has considerably caught up with the US in economic power and even surpassed especially in exports and FDI, but has not reached the US with the big gap in military power. The difference between the US and China in the interrelation between economic power and military power represents itself also through that the US's military expenditure to GDP is 3.4%, but China's is only 1.7%. Another prominent point is that India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia maintain relatively strong military power compared to their economic power. (Russia's nuclear weapon power rivals the US, but military expenditure would be a more proper indicator of overall military power.) To maintain such military powers, those three countries spent their military expenditure as 2.5%, 4.3%, and 9.3% of GDP. The figures are considerably or very high, compared to 1.7% of China, which has still focused on economic growth, and 2.6% of South Korea, which has been under constant war risk. Both of economic and military power of Turkiye is not strong, but its military expenditure to GDP recorded at 2.4% as a considerably high one. On the other hand, existing developed countries except for the US, such as the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada, and Spain, maintain military powers similar to their economic powers or relatively weaker than them. Whereas the UK and France maintain almost the same military power as their economic power by spending around 2.0% of GDP on military expenditure according to the NATO guideline, the rest countries maintain pretty lower military power than their economic power by spending 1.0 to 1.4% of GDP on military expenditure. Such recent power relations among countries can be summarized as follows. While the supremacy confrontation between the US and China has reached its full-scale stage through China's rapid chasing and the US's containment policies, China is still quite inferior to the US in military power. The supremacy confrontation between the US and China has been and will be giving the possibility of changing power relations among countries by shaking the established order. And, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, which have rapidly strengthened their military powers to grab such possibility, are pursuing to enlarge their influence by utilizing the empty space of China's remarkable inferiority in military power to the US. This can explain, to a large extent, the background for the breakout of the war in Ukraine and subsequent developments. The reason that Russia invaded Ukraine would have been not only because of Russia's fear of NATO's further enlargement to the east, but also Russia's strategic calculation that it would be an important opportunity to enlarge its influence if it successfully occupied Ukraine against NATO. India, which has been participating in the Quad aiming at surrounding China under the initiative of the US, is de facto supporting Russia in this war in Ukraine by refusing to participate in sanctions against Russia and increasing energy imports from Russia. Saudi Arabia, which was a staunch ally of the US, is joining hands with Russia to maintain the crude oil prices high refusing Biden's call for reducing the prices. Also, it is offering its hands to China by allowing Huawei, a target of the US's sanction, to participate in the construction of the futuristic city Neom in the middle of a vast desert. So, when looking at the overall situation, the war in Ukraine can be said as a process where Russia, India, and Saudi Arabia, which became to maintain stronger military powers than their economic powers are further shaking the world order to grab the possibility to enlarge their influence as the existing world order based on the US's overwhelming supremacy begins to falter due to supremacy confrontation between the US and China. Of course, when looking at the other parts, the war in Ukraine is also a process where the US, intending to maintain its existing supremacy, is counter-offending by actively supporting Ukraine's proxy war as leading NATO. It is also a process to make Western powers, which are greatly stimulated by the trials to reorganize the world order by some countries including Russia, take up assertive rearmament. In particular, Japan and Germany are commonly pursuing to expand their military expenditure to the level of 2% of GDP. China is reciprocating carefully but clearly to the three countries that are shaking the world order. While avoiding direct support to Russia in relation to the war, China is de facto supporting Russia by not participating in the sanctions against it and increasing energy imports from it. China is seeking to resolve border disputes with India quickly, saying "we should not miss this crucial change in the international relations that couldn't be seen over a century." And China is trying to make a fissure in the only-in-dollar crude oil trade system, which has been one of the crucial axes for maintaining the US dollar as the key currency, by suggesting payment in yuan in crude oil trade as a reward for a stable large amount of import of oil and gas. So, will the world order be reorganized into a structure of confrontation between the US-led camp and China-led camp around the supremacy confrontation between the US and China? There is a possibility of that, but another possibility seems bigger at this time. Now, the supremacy confrontation between the US and China will inevitably have continued until the winner is finally confirmed. But it is another problem whether other major powers also will be included as sub-partners within the structure of supremacy confrontation between the US-led and China-led camps. Above all, the possibility for Russia, India, and Saudi Arabia to become sub-partners or firm allies of China still looks not so high. The strategic interests of those three countries are only in expanding their influence by utilizing empty space opened by the supremacy confrontation between the US and China. While they are improving relations with China according to their needs at this time, they will be likely to change their directions again in the not-so-distant future to meet their other needs. In other aspects, China is not yet strong enough to encompass those three countries under its leadership. A more important reason is that the contradiction within the US-led Western camp is by no means trivial. Biden's foreign policy to revive the US's relations with traditional allies against Trump's America First policy seems to have become successful by recovering the unity of NATO through the joint response to the war in Ukraine. However, in August 2022, the Biden administration and Democratic Party implemented their America First policy, which is beyond Trump's one, by enacting the 'CHIPs and Science Act' and the 'Inflation Reduction Act.' Under the 'CHIPs and Science Act', only companies producing semiconductors in the US and abandoning investments in China for 10 years will be able to receive subsidies from the US government. And under the 'Inflation Reduction Act', only companies moving production bases for electrical cars and batteries to North America will be able to receive subsidies from the US government. Furthermore, even though the US energy companies earn ridiculously huge profits by exporting gas to Europe substituting Russia, the Biden administration doesn't take any action about that. Understandably, European countries, around France and Germany, are angry at such actions of the US striking blatantly the backs of allies' heads. So, European countries are hurrying to pursue their protectionism policy, including the European Chips Act, the Carbon Border Tax Act, the Critical Raw Material Act, etc. The US's political situation where protectionism is already prevailing and its economic situation which would increasingly deteriorate tell us that the US would strengthen protectionism regardless of parties. If so, European countries would inevitably counterattack with their protectionism, and the US-led Western camp would inevitably lead to severe cracks. And then, at a certain point, the US would lose its power to bind European powers continuously under its leadership, especially if the supremacy confrontation between the US and China is not concluded with the US's unilateral win. Therefore, afterward, it seems that the world order will likely have features that, on the one hand, the US and China engage in supremacy confrontation, but on the other hand, various powers pursue their independent directions based on protectionism and so make the structure of imperialist multipole confrontation. Russia, India, and Saudi Arabia are already pursuing the reorganization of the world order assertively. On top of that, in major European countries such as France or Germany, if protectionism fiercely expands or far-right forces come to power, those countries will likely reposition themselves as hegemons leading the surrounding region and escaping US supremacy. Turkiye, which doesn't hide its ambition to be a regional hegemon even though it doesn't have strong economic and military power yet, also could be a dark horse. Whereas, in Northeast Asia, including the Korean Peninsula, all countries will likely be under the structure of the supremacy confrontation between the US and China because of its strong impact due to geopolitical conditions. A new world order, where the US-China supremacy confrontation and imperialist multipole confrontation coexist, would be considerably different from the single world order of the sole US supremacy, which made neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization possible. Even if a new world order converges simply to the US-China supremacy confrontation, it also would be pretty different from the single world order. Anyway, the new epoch will be a period of turbulence in which conflicts and wars between imperialist powers become everyday life and are increasingly intensified. (2) Hyperinflation or great financial depression and massive imperialist war What would have happened if, during the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic crisis, enormous fiscal spending of governments worldwide and ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing policies of central banks didn't implement? The results are almost obvious. The world economy would have entered into a great explosive depression (not inferior to the 1930s Great Depression) full of tremendous bankruptcies and unemployment. Meanwhile, for a year after the break-out of the 2008 financial crisis and for a year after the break-out of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the average percentage change in the US consumer price index from a year ago respectively recorded -0.3% and 1.2%. If these figures had been over 7% or even around 10%, would such policies of governments and central banks worldwide have been possible? Or could they have had effects similar to what we experienced? It's not a simple question. Anyway, in such situations, enormous fiscal spending, ultra-low interest rates, and quantitative easing would have been by no means easy. It is because such policies could have provided huge energy to inflation. But doing nothing also would have been impossible, because the world economy could have slipped into a great depression unless doing something. So, the capitalist class worldwide would have had to find a miraculous balance point, not providing huge energy to inflation but capable of blocking a great depression. Only if such a balance point had existed. What will happen if such situations repeat several times in increasingly worsened forms? They would be able to find such a miraculous balance point once or twice, but will it be continuously possible? What will happen if it is impossible? Hyperinflation? Great financial depression? Or both of them? The problem is the possibility that such situations will be laid in front of us is very high. The possibility comes from two points. First, (as explained earlier) even though a tremendous financial crisis is already possible at any time due to unprecedented bubbles in the global stock and real estate markets, today's capitalism will inevitably form more enormous bubbles continuously because it has to pursue huge financial expropriation endlessly. Second, the new world order dominated by supremacy confrontation and protectionism substituting globalization will inevitably make the wave of inflation strike the world repeatedly. Under the new world order, conflicts between imperialist powers, which will occur much more frequently due to supremacy confrontation and protectionism, will repeatedly put the global supply chain into chaos, if not necessarily leading to war. And such conflicts will force the global supply chain itself to be reorganized by the logic of supremacy confrontation and protectionism than the logic of the economy. That will mean considerable additional costs and inefficiencies economically. In fact, the logic of the new world order to put ahead the supremacy confrontation and protectionism than globalization is already working. In 2022, despite suffering from significant inflation, the US has not revoked high tariffs on imports from China. Also, the US intends to exclude China from the high-tech semiconductor supply chain as a part of the supremacy confrontation and give massive subsidies only to companies to produce in the US as putting ahead protectionism. The logic of globalization, which is 'to produce at the cheapest place,' is assertively being denied by the US, which once forced globalization on the whole world with its power. Instead of long-term low prices that were possible by producing at the cheapest place, now a period to live with inflation will inevitably unfold as a long-term trend. In 2022, major central banks, including the US Fed, have quickly raised interest rates to cope with inflation. For example, the US Fed has raised 4.25% points of the federal interest rate over seven times from March to December. As a result, the US inflation rate gradually declined from 9.1% in June to 6.5% in December. But the Consumer Price Index is still high, and the US Fed is forecasted to raise about 1% points of the federal interest rate additionally in 2023. Anyway, through that, this wave of inflation would be able to be repressed. But, from now on, the wave of economic stagnation induced by interest rate raising, through the rings of debt burden increasing, corporate credit crunch, household consumption shrink, and stock and real estate prices decline should be passed through. It isn't yet evident what extent coming economic stagnation will be. However, considering the 2008 financial crisis broke out two years after the US Fed had raised 4.25% points of the federal interest rate in 2004-2006, the wave height of this interest rate raising, which will raise more during less period, could be not-so-small. In fact, the US's equity market capitalization to GDP recorded 162.1% in the 3rd quarter of 2022, which was 49.3% points lower than 211.4% at its peak in the 4th quarter of 2021. (In the dot-com bubble crash, the figure dropped by 69.8% points for 12 quarters, and in the financial crisis, 68.1% points for 7 quarters.) While the US real estate market, which formed a huge bubble equivalent to the stock market, is yet in a slight decline after reaching its peak in May 2022, the extent and speed of decline in that market also will largely affect the economic situation in the world, beyond the US. Meanwhile, according to the IMF, total global debts, encompassing household, corporate, and public debt, rose from 195% in 2007 to 256% in 2020. The fact that the burden and impact due to interest rate raising become more significant as much as debt increase could be an important factor in worsening coming economic stagnation. But, looking at the other aspects, we can confirm some parts prepared better than the 2008 financial crisis. For example, the US has made the interest rates of almost all mortgage loans fixed after the 2008 financial crisis, which will be effective to some extent in mitigating the burden due to interest rate raising (at least in the US). Some analysts argue that the number of countries immersed in a foreign exchange crisis has been yet relatively small, different from the past cases, compared to the extent and speed of the interest rate raising of the US Fed because many countries have prepared based on past experiences. So there are some forecasts, mixed with hopes, that economic stagnation in 2023 will be relatively less serious. Whereas, there is another forecast that Japan and China will provoke a global economic crisis. Japan is maintaining its standard interest rate of minus due to its world's top-level state debt of 266% of GDP, even though inflation is reaching its highest point over 40 years. And China is already experiencing a huge real estate bubble bursting. No matter how severe the economic stagnation in 2023 is, the real problem could be the next. It is because, due to huge accumulated state debts already reaching 100% of GDP on the average in the world, and due to the flame of inflation not easily extinguished, it will be challenging for governments and central banks to implement economic boosts through enormous fiscal spending, ultra-low interest rates, and quantitative easing. We could assume a scenario that economic stagnation begins not-so-seriously in 2023 but, as governments and central banks show their incapabilities for economic boosts, it increasingly worsens with prolonged extension and then finally enters into a severe economic crisis. Or we could assume another scenario that, as governments and central banks implement economic boosts beyond their capabilities, more huge bubbles are formed once again, and then much more rapid and strong inflation swoops the bubbles. Anyway, it is impossible to anticipate the future concretely. The aspect and speed with which the situation unfolds will be changed by many variables that we can't know now. But, we can foresee the trend at least. That is, it is highly likely that the global economy will go ahead, by going through some twists and turns, toward either hyperinflation or a great financial depression, or even both of them. What choice will the capitalist class make when capitalism reaches such a catastrophic situation? When reaching such a situation, the most reliable exit for the capitalist class would be the historical experience of Word War II, which made capitalism escape from the 1930s Great Depression and recover vigor to some extent by carrying out mass destruction and genocide. As such a long total war would not be easy nowadays due to abominable nuclear armaments that could destroy the earth itself, the capitalist class would pursue other forms of massive wars having similar effects. Conflicts between imperialist powers, with supremacy confrontation and protectionism putting ahead, that would be accumulated during the capitalist economy is heading to a catastrophe, would provide the capitalist class sufficient opportunities and causes capable of being used for such wars. To desperately make such extremely reactionary wars possible, the resistance of the working class must be repressed thoroughly, so the capitalist class would try to establish fascist regimes in many countries. (3) For the reconstruction of class struggle and revolutionary development Neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization, which swept away the world after the 1980s, unfolded on the basis of having calmed workers' explosive struggles worldwide in the 1970s. Therefore, before the 2008 financial crisis, workers' struggles worldwide were in stagnation more severe than ever before, even though exploitation and expropriation were considerably strengthened. (From a global perspective, South Korea's experience of going through a period of powerful workers' struggles from the late 1980s to the early 1990s was one of the exceptional cases, together with Brazil and South Africa.) However, the 2008 financial crisis made the aspect of workers' struggles also considerably change. It is because the capitalist class worldwide inflicted tremendous offensives continuously to make the working class burden the sufferings and costs due to the financial crisis. Under the wave of the financial crisis, numerous workers and people became intensive victims of financial expropriation, being robbed of their houses or going bankrupt. Many governments, which spent astronomical finance through bail-outs and economic boosts to cope with the financial crisis, poured massive offensives, such as layoffs and wage cuts in public sectors, welfare spending cuts, pension reform, etc., to pass on the burden of exploding increase in state debts to workers. Private corporations worldwide also unfolded large-scale restructuring to shift the burden of credit crunch and consumption shrinking due to the financial crisis to workers. And across the period of the Great Recession, labor law reforms continued one after another aiming at the retreat of workers' rights and weakening of labor unions. Flexibilization of labor, which has expanded since the 1980s, more accelerated, making many more workers become into more various forms of unstable workers. Against the relentless attacks of the capitalist class, and with anger on ruined life and a hopeless future, the working class and the oppressed have unfolded fierce counter-attacks around the world since 2010. In 2010-12, the first wave of struggles of workers and people worldwide unfolded, such as general strikes against pension reform in France, the Arab Spring, the 'Indignados' movement in Spain, the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US, general strikes against austerity in Greece, etc. And in 2018-20, the second wave unfolded, such as the Yellow Vest protests in France, protests for democracy in Hong Kong, people's revolt in Chile, the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, etc. In 2022, workers worldwide, who had taken pride in being truly essential for society during the COVID-19 pandemic, unfolded strong wage struggles against the deprivation of the right to live due to inflation. And now, the working class in the world is facing a period that is highly likely to be filled with economic stagnation and economic crisis and finally led to a catastrophe such as hyperinflation or a great financial depression. And it is facing a period that is highly likely to be filled with repeated conflicts between imperialist powers putting supremacy confrontation and protectionism ahead and finally led to massive wars. The upcoming 'epoch of crisis and war' will push the working class in the world to extreme suffering and despair. The sole hope for the working class in the world will be in overturning this dark epoch to an 'epoch of revolution.' So, how should the working class develop its struggle and movement to be able to overturn an epoch of crisis and war to an epoch of revolution? The concrete answer should be different in each country because of various aspects and degrees of the development of the class struggle. But the key directions wouldn't be quite different. Especially from the perspective of directions for which the South Korean working class's struggle and movement should go ahead, we can summarize those as follows. First, we should open the way for workers' struggles based on working-class-unity, ones that broad working masses dynamically participate putting the demand for the whole working class. Regardless of regular or irregular workers, regardless of working in large companies or medium-small companies, and regardless of working in public or private sectors, all workers now should resolutely overcome trade unionism only focusing on short-sighted and narrow changes. We should learn the way to fight by being united as a single class by establishing demands of the whole working class and drawing in broad working masses while looking directly at the big picture to affect the destiny of the whole working class. Second, the working class should try to unite broad oppressed people, putting itself as a core. For this, the working class should fight at the forefront of various social struggles, such as struggles against oppression and discrimination, struggles against climate disaster and environmental destruction, struggles for social rights to live and democratic basic rights, struggles against imperialism and imperialist wars, etc. Especially, the working class should make young people to be deprived of their whole future in the coming capitalism toward crisis and war be able to find their earnest hope for the new world in the struggles with the working class. Third, the working class should reject all stupid dependence on all capitalist forces, and firmly develop the 'independence of the working class' only believing in united struggles of itself. And the working class should develop a revolutionary workers' political movement capable of leading the reconstruction, political development, and revolutionary leap of workers' struggles devotedly. The only way capable of saving the working class and humanity from the upcoming suffering of catastrophe and danger of annihilation will be in the construction of socialism through workers' revolutions worldwide. Only by the construction of the global socialist system, in which the working class becomes an actual master in a state, workplace, and society and a democratically planned economy and self-management of producers are combined, will we be able to end exploitation, oppression, discrimination, poverty, barbarism, and war, which will have been endlessly repeated until capitalism ends, and go forward to a new world.

2023-02-05 | 조회 388

The US-South Korea joint air exercise 'Vigilant Storm' ended on November 5. In response to the exercise, North Korea fired dozens of missiles into the West Sea, and also conducted a group flight of military planes with a strong character of armed protests. On the last day of training, the US military then deployed two B-1Bs, one of the three major US strategic bombers. In response, North Korea fired four short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) into the West Sea on the morning of the 5th. What deserves more attention than the formidable weapons system revealed on the surface of this situation is the global military confrontation surrounding the Korean Peninsula. This tension arose at a time when the imperialist war for hegemony that had broken out in Ukraine was leading to endless clashes. It also occurred amid heightened tensions over a clash between the United States and China as the Xi Jinping administration officially declared its will for Taiwan unification, including the use of force. In a broader context, the tensions that developed on the Korean Peninsula from the end of October to the beginning of November are an extension of the growing confrontation for hegemony between the two camps of imperialism on a global scale. The overwhelming economic dominance of the US, which has ruled the world as the only hegemon since the fall of the USSR, is crumbling. To compensate for this, the military superiority of US imperialism must be more overwhelming. This means that the military significance of the Korean Peninsula becomes more critical to US imperialism. This is because the Korean Peninsula is in a decisive geopolitical position to directly attack inland China from land by mobilizing the military forces of the United States, South Korea, and Japan. The Vigilant Storm exercise was actually a threat from US imperialism to the Chinese government. The rulers of North and South Korea The fate of the rulers of North and South Korea is deeply subordinated to this confrontation over hegemony between imperialism. This was the case with the Korean War that broke out in 1950 and the changes that occurred in North and South Korea after that. The Korean War was nothing more than a proxy war between the US and the USSR. The rapid economic development that took place in South Korea over the next several decades was fueled by the large-scale economic support of South Korea by the United States, aiming for a 'showcase' effect in the imperialist competition for hegemony. After the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s and the dissolution of the Cold War system, American imperialism and the West, which longed for a growth engine for global capitalism, opened up economic development opportunities for China, which had contributed to isolating the USSR. In the worldwide system of vertical division of labor, China accelerated industrial development by attracting large-scale capital, while the United States and the West reaped enormous profits by inflowing monopoly capital into China. During this honeymoon period, South Korean capital also benefited enormously. Large-scale trade exports and capital inflow to China were made, and this became an opportunity for a new leap forward for South Korean capital, which had been facing a decline in the rate of profit since the mid-1980s. As South Korean capital put each of its two legs on each side of US and Chinese imperialism economically, the South Korean government attempted to cross a precarious tightrope diplomatically between the two. However, as the economic honeymoon broke up recently and the fierce confrontation for hegemony began in earnest, the South Korean government was forced to choose between the two imperialist camps and is being incorporated more deeply into the US imperialist camp. During this period, North Korea was isolated from the world economy like an isolated island. China has provided some economic support to North Korea because of the need for a buffer to check the military alliance between the US, Japan, and South Korea and filter direct attacks from US imperialism. Nevertheless, the Chinese rulers, who were in the process of rapid economic accumulation, did not have the strength to provide sufficient aid to North Korea, nor did they have the will to do so. This became the background for the accelerating economic downturn in North Korea and the rapid widening of the economic gap with South Korea. The shadow of the crisis inevitably overshadowed the North Korean system. To overcome this crisis, the card that the North Korean rulers took out was the development of nuclear weapons. On the one hand, it was a means of mass control to elicit the legitimacy of domination, putting forward nationalism. On the other hand, it was to derive political and economic interests such as China-Vietnamese reform and opening-up, which guarantees the security of North Korea's existing ruling system, using 'nuclear,' out of the struggle for supremacy between the two imperialists. But this tactic was a double-edged sword. Pouring North Korea's already scarce social resources into nuclear development was to inflict enormous sacrifice and suffering on the North Korean workers. It could be maintained temporarily, but it should be a dangerous factor in threatening North Korea's ruling regime in the long run. The need to expand nuclear development and ballistic missile testing, and to negotiate a 'big deal' with the imperialist forces using these means of pressure, has become more pressing to them. Albeit broken up at the last minute, the big deal negotiations between the Trump administration and the North Korean government clearly stated that. The first reason the big deal broke up was that the US could no longer provide as strong economic compensation as it had provided to South Korea in the past. Next, the condition of the big deal that the US government demanded from the North Korean government was a clear promise that North Korea would be a dagger aimed at China under the neck. For the North Korean government, that meant giving up even aid from China and enduring huge tensions with China. This choice was risky when the United States did not guarantee sufficient economic support promises to revive and develop the North Korean regime as Vietnam did. Hence, the big deal failed. Since then, North Korean rulers have been leaning toward Chinese imperialism. An interlude in which the rulers of North and South Korea pursued a certain peace while performing dangerous stunts between the two imperialist camps could no longer be screened. What does this mean? The bloody winds of the imperialist war for hegemony are raging in the Korean Peninsula once again. The fate of the Korean Peninsula will not be determined by the rulers of the two Koreas, but by a vast global flow. Today's national self-determination right As a result of the unavoidable self-contradictions of the reactionary bureaucratic ruling system, the ruling class in North Korea is engrossed in adventurism. That's nuclear armament. From a formal point of view, even though it is a reactionary system, the demand for self-determination of a weak country like North Korea looks pretty justified. And support for that means support for the country's right to autonomous arming, and naturally, this seems to should be linked to support for North Korea's nuclear armament. Nuclear armament feels like a legitimate national resistance against the United States as the imperialist hegemon power. But "All theory is gray. But forever green is the tree of life." We must approach self-determination right concretely in the context of today's world capitalism and the task of revolutionary struggle in the world. What is the situation today? All capitalist countries are being forced to choose between the US imperialist camp and the Chinese/Russian imperialist camp as an intermediate or subordinate partner. Even if they are not strong imperialist countries, all capitalist countries are being forced to assume a part of a specific imperialist camp. Let's look at Ukraine's national liberation slogan against Russian imperialist aggression. The demand for national self-determination by the working class, which is not only independent of but also against American and Western imperialism and fighting against Russian imperialism as part of the socialist revolution, is virtually non-existent in present-day Ukraine. What actually exists is only the movement of the reactionary Ukrainian ruling class, which argues the national defense war by putting forward the slogan of national self-determination but comprises a chain of the US imperialist camp and conducts one axis of the imperialist hegemony war. Therefore, we basically define the war waged by the Ukrainian government as nothing more than a proxy war for the US-Western imperialist camp and do not support it. Another key that cannot be overlooked when considering the subject advocating self-determination right is whether it reflects the initiative and independence of the oppressed masses. This is the core reason we support the Vietnam War for National Liberation in the 1970s but do not support today's hypocritical self-determination of the Ukrainian ruling class. The 'nuclear armament' raised by the North Korean regime is also placed in such a context. As seen not only in North Korea but also in countries in the Middle East and Africa, the characteristic of today is that the national self-determination right pursued by the ruling class is effectively incorporated as a part of the imperialist hegemony camp. The 2003 Kurdish independence movement in northern Iraq can be a prime example. To secure national self-determination from the oppression of the Iraqi government, they adopted the route of gaining some autonomy in cooperation with the US invading Iraq. Conversely, today, the prospect of genuinely realizing national self-determination rights cannot help being inevitably integrated into a part of the prospect of the workers' world revolution. The formula of the permanent revolution, in which the democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution, must be extended to the prospect of the permanent revolution, which organically combines the full realization of the national self-determination right with the world socialist revolution led by the working class. North Korea's nuclear armament North Korea's nuclear armament must also be analyzed and judged in the context of the times and in the specific context of whether it promotes the revolutionary movement and unity of the working class. First of all, North Korea's nuclear armament reflects the interests of the ruling class in North Korea, which seeks to survive among imperialist powers. Although it advocates national self-determination, in reality, this nuclear armament is at the cost of tremendous sacrifice and suffering of the North Korean working class. And it is subordinated to the vile purpose of securing an economic foundation for the survival of the ruling class in North Korea through deals with imperialist powers. To increase its value at the deal, the ruling class in North Korea is using nuclear weapons as an adventurist means of speculation. The process of increasing the range of long-range missiles such as ICBMs is to keep stepping on the accelerator pedal of adventurism toward the edge of the cliff. It is because the crisis of the North Korean system is getting more serious, and the 'golden time' is not much remained. But just before the long-range nuclear missile capable of hitting the US mainland is technologically complete, US imperialism will pull the trigger with reasonable cause to wage war on North Korea. The outcome of that war will be obvious. North Korea would fall under the rule of US imperialism, which would be enough to threaten China. Only one thing can become an obstacle to such a war: the danger of escalation into a world war through China's intervention. But this is the worst-case scenario for Chinese rulers. If they do not intervene, they will hand over North Korea to the United States. What if they intervene? They will have to fall into an unwanted world war or Quasi-world war. Given that it is still unfavorable to challenge the hegemony of the United States head-on, China's hegemony tactic is to wait and persevere for a while until it accumulates more power, not giving the cause for provocation to the US. So the Chinese rulers hope that North Korea remains not a powder storehouse of war but a buffer zone to interrupt the US blockade of China. For that reason, on October 28th, at the UN General Assembly First Committee (in charge of disarmament and international security), China voted in favor of a draft resolution "to condemn the six nuclear tests conducted by the DPRK (North Korea) and call on that country to abandon its nuclear weapons program." However, the ruling class in North Korea, standing in the face of increasing contradictions and instability of the system, cannot afford to wait leisurely. By strengthening its nuclear armament, the ruling class in North Korea should pressure the ruling class in China in order to obtain sufficient aid. If that doesn't work, it will try a new big deal with the US. Either way, the adventurism of the ruling class in North Korea is the deed to push the entire Korean Peninsula into the midst of the war over imperialist hegemony. Next, North Korea's nuclear armament will only push the working class of the two Koreas into a fierce mutual confrontation, giving North and South rulers excuses to expand military expenditure, reinforce public security ruling, and attack the workers' movement. In particular, it will provide the right-wing forces in South Korea an opportunity, under the pretext of North Korea's nuclear armament, to evolve into fascism and attack the South Korean workers' movement strongly. Suppose a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula under the current circumstances. In that case, the North and South Korean working classes will be divided and massacre each other in the second massive Korean war. A division like that between the working classes in the two Koreas will be the greatest disaster above all. Here, the historical significance of national self-determination right as a means of removing obstacles that weaken the revolutionary unity of the working class disappears without a trace. Conversely, the independent workers' organizations that the South Korean workers' movement has built up through decades of struggle and the democratic rights it has won will be burnt to ashes in an instant. It will allow the military and fascist forces to dominate South Korea and will put South Korea under the US imperialism hegemon even more severely. Due to bureaucratic control and oppression, North Korean workers don't have any independent workers' movement. South Korean workers' movement is not yet ready to engage in a revolutionary struggle based on a revolutionary internationalist line. Such situations make it impossible to expect other results right away. On the other hand, US imperialism has a favorable option in its hands that can be used effectively at any time. US imperialism has an excuse to attack North Korea at any time as part of a war for hegemony against China, using the nuclear armament of the North Korean rulers as an alibi. In particular, when the US-China confrontation over hegemony blazes up as a military confrontation, for example, when China's invasion of Taiwan becomes a reality, North Korea's nuclear armament will become an excuse for a proxy war and drive the entire Korean Peninsula into an imperialist battlefield. All of these are the roles that North Korea's current nuclear armament can realistically perform. It is entirely inconsistent with the reason that revolutionary socialism supports national self-determination right. Nuclear armament is only operating as a crisis-overcoming program for the ruling class in North Korea, only as a huge adventurist maneuver. Tactics that the North Korean ruling class mobilizes Even as the ruling class in North Korea, this adventurous gamble is very dangerous. It is because there is a great risk of overthrowing their ruling system. So they go to great lengths to minimize that risk. However, the means they mobilize are not the united power and revolutionary potential of the North and South Korean working classes. On the contrary, they raise the bets of adventurism. The first means they are trying to mobilize is to use Chinese imperialism, one axis of the imperialist conflict over hegemony, as a shield. That point is fully reflected in North Korea's actions against the "Vigilant Storm" combined air exercise between the US and South Korea. It is significant that the four missiles on Nov. 5th were launched for the first time from Dongrim, which is in close contact with Chinese territory. When a missile is launched from a region closest to China, a counter-response by the US military will inevitably bombard that region with a missile if it decides to go to war. It will provoke China to have no choice but to intervene in the war. In a nutshell, the North Korean ruling class is trying to create a safety plate to protect the regime of North Korea using the possibility of a war against North Korea developing into a world war in which China participates. The second means the North Korean ruling class intends to mobilize is to warn that North Korea cannot be attacked without the US army's casualties. This point is reflected in the launch of ultra-low-angle, short-range missiles. These missiles clearly target the US Air Force Base in Osan and the US Base in Pyeongtaek. It shows that if the US attacks North Korea before the nuclear missile that strikes the US mainland is technologically complete, North Korea will respond by blowing up US bases in South Korea. But what are the consequences of this? The US base is located in the middle of Osan and Pyeongtaek, where large numbers of Koreans live. In the end, hitting a US base with a missile will inevitably result in the mass killing of not only the US military but also the Korean workers and people. Whatever the state of the military alliance between the US, Japan, and South Korea, this will lead to an immediate South Korean intervention in the war and will put the South Korean workers and people under the sway of war and fascism in one stroke. In the end, the North Korean ruling class is taking the world war and the great war on the Korean Peninsula hostage as means to reduce the risk of system collapse that an adventurous maneuver can cause to them as well. The demands of the working class on the Korean Peninsula We do not agree with North Korea's nuclear armament, which only provides an excuse for imperialist aggression and threatens national self-determination right, rather than expanding national self-determination right. We also oppose North Korea's nuclear armament, which could act as a means of undermining the revolutionary unity of the working class in North and South Korea and the world. While opposing North Korea's nuclear armament, we must desperately find a way to protect North Korea's self-determination right, especially to promote the revolutionary unity of the working class around the world and lead to the United Socialist Republic of South and North Korea and the United Socialist Republic of the World. We must find a way to unite workers worldwide revolutionarily while fighting against both imperialist camps. What could be such a path? We propose the following path to the working class in North and South Korea. - North Korea's abandonment of nuclear armament and the US army's withdrawal from the Korean Peninsula! Abolition of nuclear armament in all countries! - Abolition of all treaties that promote war! Abolition of mutual defense treaty between the US and South Korea! - Denouncement of the armistice agreement, declaration of the war's end, and conclusion of a peace agreement! Enacting of mutual non-aggression treaty between North and South Korea! - Prohibition of large-scale military operations by the United States, South Korea, and North Korea on the Korean Peninsula! - Disarmament in South and North Korea! Welfare Fundraising for Workers! - Humanitarian aid to North Korea! Provide North Korea with food, medicine, and energy immediately! - Stop all imperialist intervention in North Korea! Abolish the economic blockade on North Korea! - Abolition of public security apparatus, guarantee of freedom of thought, and guarantee of full rights of workers' organizations, in North and South Korea! - Guarantee of free come and go between North and South Korea! - International unity of the working class for peace, neither American imperialism nor Chinese imperialism! - Construction of a socialist Korean Peninsula through the workers' revolutions in both South and North Korea! Establishment of the United Socialist Republic of the World!

2022-11-10 | 조회 292

Hyundai Glovis worker and Hyundai heavy industry subsidiary worker in South Korea cut their hair shouting "Women, Life, Freedom", as a solidarity action with Iranian people who are protesting against the dictatorship for women's right.

2022-10-24 | 조회 256

Park-JeongHoon, a leader of 'rider union' in South Korea, is sending message of condolence to Sebastian, who died of accident in Italia. he said that there was similiar death of rider due to fatal accident while riding, but CoupangEats, which is delivery platform company, didn't give any condolence message but just sent repeatably 'promotion' messages. Park emphasized the international unite of delivery workers against these delivery companies which don't care about the death of delivery workers. ----brief explanation---- Korean Riders' union staged their first strike on Oct. 18 against CoupangEats, 2nd largest food delivery platform in Korea. The union points out cuts in basic delivery fees, opaque delivery fee decisions, and frequent industrial accidents. Korean Riders' union's demand on 18 Oct. strike - Raise up basic fee (for short delivery distance) - Make a fair standard on extra fee per kilometers - Support rider's insurance payments - Provide information on algrithm and data closely connected with working conditions Basic fee (under 650m delivery distance) had been sharply cut from 3,100 won to 2,500 won by 20% last year. (2,500 Korean won is not more than 1.8$) "No" "too early to adopt" "unprecedent in platform economy" "too risky to be documented" ... During 24 negotiation rounds, CoupangEats' answer has been always like this. Now Korean riders begins to act starting strike on 18 Oct. "Unity makes changes" - riders union's famous motto Riders' union is now organizing 2nd strike on 27 Oct. with Coupang fulfillment workers and couriers.

2022-10-21 | 조회 370

March to Socialism notifies Our Position to advanced workers and all comrades fighting against capitalism and asks them to go together toward building a socialist workers' party. 1. Abolishing capitalism 2. Socialism as the self-emancipation of the working class 3. Building a socialist workers’ party 4. The internationalism of the working class 5. The workers’ united front and leading all-working-class-united struggles 6. The hegemony of the working class --------- 1. Abolishing capitalism Capitalism is a class society in which a handful of capitalists owning the means of production exploit workers of a majority. As capitalist society grows, this exploitation continues to enlarge. While the wealth, extravagance, and power of a minority of the owners grow perpetually and absurdly, the conditions of workers get worse relatively and even absolutely when capitalism goes into crisis. For the same reason, all developments of production capacity due to advancements in science and technology in capitalist society turn into instruments of increased exploitation to fire workers, intensify labor intensity, and force dangerous work and low wages on workers. As a result, unemployment, relative poverty, humiliation, alienation of work, increasing labor intensity, deprivation of rights, and instability of life are attacking more and more workers. While the amount of production grows explosively according to the endless accumulation instinct of capital that knows no limitation, workers' purchase ability compared to that shrinks less and less. As a result, it is more and more difficult for commodities to find appropriate markets, leading to unlimited competition, overproduction, chronic recession, panic, and imperialist war. International monopoly capitalists represented by multinational companies are thrusting social inequalities to the end and spreading the contradiction of capitalism in all corners of the world. With spreading to the whole world, competition has been much more sharpened. But, in other aspects, the trend of counter-globalization started after the global financial crisis in 2008, and even the trend of separation between blocs began to spread rapidly after the break-out of war in Ukraine in 2022. This reflects the inherent tendency of capitalism that production should be more developed by closely connecting worldwide but it is unceasingly disturbed and braked by competition between capitalists in different countries, especially imperialist hegemony wars. The more fatal limitation of capitalism is revealed clearly in the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. As the rate of profit has declined due to the contradictions and limitations of capitalism itself, recessions have become chronic, and the danger of another great depression is threatening the whole world. But the crisis control ability in capitalism has been continuously drying. Today capitalists are heading into a stranded situation between inflation and deflation due to almost bankrupted fiscal states of countries and disturbed values of currencies etc. Together with this, as the uneven development of capitalist countries disturbs the hierarchical order of imperialism unceasingly, the confrontation over supremacy between advanced imperialist camps, including the US, and chasing imperialist camps, including China, is more and more intensified to call the specter of enormous world war. The unlimited desire of the capitalist accumulation system has threatened even the overall ecosystem of the earth, so the climate crisis is heading to a dangerous stage as much as unrecoverable. Various disasters, such as drought, flood, pandemic, famine, ecosystem disturbance, etc., are rapidly spreading. Hunger, increment of unemployment and inequality, chronic recession, barbarization, crime, environmental destruction, illness, and war; all of these are explicitly the present figure of world capitalism. As the capitalist system has decayed, the reactionary, violent, and savage character of the capitalist state apparatus also has been becoming more blatant. The capitalist state, armed with violent police and army as well as bureaucratic legislative, administrative, and judiciary apparatuses, etc., has consistently played the role of the executive committee of the capitalist class, repressing strikes and protests violently as well as enacting and forcing unjust laws for capitalists. This nature of the capitalist state has been most clearly revealed in imperialist oppression and confrontation over supremacy. In foreign policies, even the capitalist states with the most democratic cover have blatantly revealed their actual figure as violent imperialist forces armed with guns, cannons, missiles, and nuclear weapons and committing massive slaughter. The capitalist system is becoming more reactionary. Capitalists feel that they have to offend workers' organizations more viciously to recover the falling rate of profit by intensifying the exploitation of workers. As well as the acceleration of political offensives such as claims and provisional seizures for damages by strikes, fascism-like far-right forces intending to annihilate workers' organizations including trade unions are continuously spreading in the capitalist class. The policies of discrimination and exclusion against social minorities such as migrants, women, LGBTQ+, disabled, etc., are enlarging to divide the working class and eliminate its ability to defy. Today, the emancipation of workers and people, as well as the progress of humankind, can only be realized in the revolutionary struggle to abolish capitalism. Even though how much difficulty this struggle slaps, there is no other way but this through which the working class and humankind can escape from the terrible misery of capitalism. 2. Socialism as the self-emancipation of the working class Capitalism is also conceiving the revolutionary conditions which will overthrow itself. The accumulation process of capitalism, which concentrates and centralizes means of production and socializes production processes, has also created huge workplaces in which numerous workers concentrate and workers' social networks. Workers, forged by collective work in workplaces and closely connected socially, have become able to unite and fight against the capitalist class powerfully and unfold not only struggles in workplaces or industries but also even nationwide struggles with the unity of whole workers. In addition, capitalism has given birth to enormous numbers of new workers worldwide, spreading the wave of workers' struggle to whole countries. Vast numbers of new workers are being created in China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. The possibility of uniting internationally across borders and unfolding immense struggles for emancipation is growing daily. All of these are leading this time to the era of struggle for the complete emancipation of the working class, that is, the era of socialism. Socialism will introduce social collective owning and running of means of production and planned production by the whole society. Furthermore, socialism will thoroughly combine this planned economy with a self-controlled production process in which workers themselves democratically decide and horizontally cooperate. So it will abolish all classes together with the emancipation of the working class and inequalities generated from class division. And it will go toward a communist society that uses all results of developments of production ability to secure complete welfare and full-scale self-realization of all people in society, based on the principle of the community as "production according to ability and distribution according to needs." Socialism can only be realized by the movement of the working class itself. The working class can be emancipated through the realization of socialism only when establishing workers' power based on the initiative and activeness of the working class itself. It can build socialism only through workers' organizations rooted in workplaces which are units where producers work, such as workers' council-type states. Workers' organizations are muscles of workers' power as well as pillars of socialism. Workers' power will elect, recall, and control all government officials from below and integrate legislative, judiciary, and executive into one within its hands. Through that, it will gather the strength and wisdom of the whole working class, abolish capitalism, and open up a socialist society. The above is the ultimate purpose of the workers' movement that revolutionary workers in all countries pursue together. March to Socialism acts to realize just the same ultimate purpose as that. We are willing to participate in every footstep that the Korean workers' movement sets in the course of completing such a great mission with all our might and lead practically ahead of it. While doing so, we will always clearly suggest the movement's aim, that is, building a socialist society. 3. Building a socialist workers’ party The crisis of the Korean workers' movement that has continued since the mid-1990s is the result of accumulating bitter historical defeats in several layers that have been generated by the fact that most leaders have feared unfolding daring and full-scale workers' united struggle and going ahead to build a combative and revolutionary working class party based on that. In order to overcome this, while making workers' struggles go ahead to combative and class-united orientation, we must create a socialist workers' party that integrates the most active militants of the working class into one organization under the prospects of socialism. March to Socialism is an organizational instrument to serve that. This time should be the process in which the working class is forged through a blast furnace of class struggles as the protagonist capable of exhibiting the potential of socialism. And this time also should be the period in which socialists lead such class struggles and so prepare to build a socialist workers' party capable of leading the future struggles for workers' emancipation. The socialist workers' party that we want to build is an organization of the most advanced workers, who lead class-oriented struggles of workers and guide the prospects of building a socialist society, as well as a real workers' party, that is deeply rooted in working masses by being based on workplace cells or district cells. This socialist workers' party can only be built by active militants who raise the class struggle ability of the working class through intense practices and guide the working class to the line of socialism on the road of such class struggles. To complete such duties, we must thoroughly sever ourselves from the bourgeois-like-transformed fake socialist system and make the distorted socialism by them restored rightly. The communist parties in the former USSR after the Stalinist counter-revolution, former Eastern European countries, North Korea, and China have been the parties of rulers who speak socialism but actually oppress and exploit the working class. The reformist parties in Europe and Latin America have led workers' struggles to the road of reformism and protected the capitalist system. As fighting against those forces that have transformed and distorted socialism, we will strive to build a socialist workers' party that restores the real tradition of socialism. We want to be a core and impetus for building a socialist workers' party by vigorously pushing forward socialist political activities unfolded on the wide land of workers' struggle and in the middle of the live workers' movement. We will synthesize practical activities, that organize class struggles and actually push forward workers' movements, and theoretical activities, that issue goals and prospects of movements, into unified socialist political activities. We will strive to make the process of intense answering the demands of class struggles generated from reality the most active chance for socialist propaganda, agitation, and individual organization. In doing so, we will learn together with workers from all experiences of class struggles and strive to be grown as an alternative leadership for class struggles. To successfully unfold the struggle of building a socialist workers' party, March to Socialism will strive to lie its foundational basis on the workplace cells of workers armed with socialist thoughts and closely connected with all struggles of the working masses. It is because the organization we want to build is the one that leads workers' struggles and is run by the initiative of militants connected with workplaces and acting in a socialist way. March to Socialism accepts the thought of democratic centralism, summarized by the free discussion and unified action, as the basic principle for running our organization. This means that all discussions within us are implemented in a comradeship way, bolstering unification toward the rightest orientation and that we pursue organic cooperation between all comrades as the principle for activity and development within us. And by applying democratic centralism, March to Socialism will constantly adapt its activities to the needs of the actual workers' movement and so go vigorously toward building a socialist workers' party. 4. The internationalism of the working class The Korean working class is a part of the international working class that struggles for workers' emancipation worldwide. Only workers' internationalism can open the future of socialism. As production and exchange have developed internationally, the building of socialism can only be realized through the international unity of the working class. The objective condition for this has continuously matured. Based on the higher level of globalization of capitalism, the foundation for more closely connecting and integrating workers' movements of all countries is getting increasingly abundant. Defending workers' internationalism is practically getting more critical in the aspects of developing workers' struggles, too. The factory moving of multinational companies has been forcing the Race to the Bottom on all workers worldwide. In order to fight against that, the international unity of workers, shouting "workers of all countries, unite! overturn the world!", has been getting increasingly important. If workers don't go ahead toward socialist unity through workers' internationalism, they will have to surrender to nationalism, like the strengthening of national competitiveness, and fall into class collaborationism. And workers in different countries will have to be divided, and aim guns at each other in front of wars which will be more frequently generated as imperialist competition gets increasingly acute. March to Socialism will defend workers' internationalism against nationalist currents, fight against imperialist oppression and wars, and accept it as a decisive task to spread this cause in the Korean workers' movement. We will unite with socialist forces worldwide, lead ahead united struggles of workers worldwide, and eventually go ahead toward building a revolutionary socialist international organization. 5. The workers’ united front and leading all-working-class-united struggles The capitalist class ceaselessly attacks workers, partially or fully. Therefore workers must repeatedly choose whether they stand on the stage of the battle or are destroyed and submitted. As the primary instrument for fighting against capitalists' attack by raising the class struggle ability of working masses, March to Socialism takes notice of workers' united front that unites workers into an independent rank. It is because the power of workers' struggle is basically generated by the broad unity of workers, and only through the growth of this struggle working masses can choose the real working class party and overcome the reformist leaders. Today, Korean socialist forces have not grown meaningfully. Therefore, the gap between objective situation and subjective ability is enormous. When socialists actively intervene in class struggles, workers' united front can be a powerful instrument to reduce this gap. First of all, we take note of trade unions. It is because trade union is the most popular organization for the unity of workers in which workers organize themselves independently in the present in South Korea. Furthermore, we build and participate in the organization of advanced workers that can play a role as the impetus for workers' struggles. Through these various layers of workers' united fronts, while intervening in and influencing class struggles with the biggest ability we have, we will strive to develop the class struggle ability of the working class. When the united power of the working class is properly realized through a united front, and so the workers' movement goes ahead, the decisive question, "where this power should go ahead for our emancipation," will be put in front of the workers' movement. Like this, the popular bridge going for the political and revolutionary movement will be able to be laid through the unity of the working class. And if socialists' active political activity combines with that situation, we are confident that socialism will be positioned as the conviction of the working masses at that period. And by acting in a way that does not impair the unity principle of the workers' movement and closely be connected to the struggle experience of workers themselves in a united front, we will go toward practically eliminating the influence of opportunist and reformist forces. Especially concerning the trade union movement, March to Socialism considers the objective situation of bureaucratization of today's Korean trade union movement, which is a common phenomenon in all capitalist countries. Of course, we will not avoid activities connected with the official system of trade unions. We will instead strive to make such activities active instruments representing the interests and demands of rank-and-file workers. Only when we utilize the official system of trade unions in the orientation of depending on real influence in rank-and-file union members and growing the subjectiveness and activeness of them, we can continue to fight against reformist and trade-unionist bureaucrat layers and enlarge such fighting, so we can make trade unions change into the organization for the struggle of working masses. Even though there would be various forms and methods, we will strive to construct the rank-and-file union members' movement within and without the trade union movement based on the spirit of the workers' council. And we will give our all efforts and supports to make combative and class-oriented advanced workers' united fronts that lead such rank-and-file union members' movements go forward. In these workers' united fronts, we will work shoulder-to-shoulder with workers but strive to be the decisive core of them while adhering to independence with a socialist flag. March to Socialism argues that organizing all-working-class-united struggles is the most prioritized practical task in the current class struggle. Unless united power, the class struggle ability of workers will become powerless, and the confidence and dynamic for socialism will be nothing but exhausted. The Korean capitalist class has divided the working class by nurturing the irregular work system and trade-unionist bureaucrat layers. And this has paralyzed the struggle ability and social hegemony of the Korean working class. To block this retreats and give an impetus to vigorous advance, we must put up the line of all-working-class-united struggle to the fore, so we must construct the front of "the capitalist class versus the working class." We will clearly issue that even the gains workers win can return to nothing anytime unless continuous advance on the basis of the all-working-class-unity. We will take the lead in advocating the line of the all-working-class-unity, regardless of whether organized in trade unions or unorganized, whether regular or irregular workers, whether women or men, whether workers in big companies or small companies, whether workers in the public or private sector. It wouldn't be excessive how much we emphasize the importance of vigorous and dynamic energy that young workers show when we break through bureaucratic and trade-unionist habitual routines, restore a class-oriented, democratic, and combative movement, and make it go ahead. Their energy will be a strong power that encourages the unity of all generation workers and the march of the workers' movement. In the process, new protagonists leading the advanced workers' movement and the socialist movement will grow. We will strive to go shoulder-to-shoulder with them and guide them toward victory. We will strongly emphasize that even though how much glitter the gain of workers' struggle, this victory is just nothing but a part of the enormous battles needed for the complete emancipation of the working class. To promote such awareness and make workers' struggles go further, we will suggest "action programs" that connect the current struggle and socialism. And we will help and lead workers to grow their ability and confidence that independently run and control the future workers' state and socialist society based on the experience of running popular organizations of workers. Also, we will strive with all our political abilities for the most advanced workers forged from such workers' united fronts to grow as the protagonists of building a socialist workers' party. 6. The hegemony of the working class March to Socialism will fight against all kinds of social oppression and discrimination, such as patriarchy, racism, meritocracy, etc., that suppress women, LGBTQ+, disabled, migrants, etc., and connect these struggles with workers' struggles against capitalist exploitation. We emphasize that only the working class can be the consistent militant against all social oppression and discrimination and, on the other aspect, only through struggles against all social oppression and discrimination the working class can unite as one and mightily fight against the rule of the capitalist class. Of course, the eventual instrument for overcoming all social oppression and discrimination is the socialist revolution. It is because all social oppression and discrimination are rooted in class hierarchical order under the capitalist exploitation system and the desperate needs of the capitalist class that can maintain their rule only through dividing the working class. But it is not automatically realized for the working class to grow as the protagonist to create a socialist new world. It needs a series of historical processes in the movement of workers themselves that workers vomit up filth capitalism has planted, and organize and forge themselves according to the principle of a socialist community. The process of workers' fighting against capitalist exploitation and all forms of social oppression and discrimination and so uniting as one has decisive importance in such processes. Socialist organizations should be the ones that embody such figures of socialist society ahead of any other. For this, March to Socialism will fight with the most decisive attitude against any oppression and discrimination that could be generated inside. And we will participate in struggles with the most energetic attitude against all forms of oppression and discrimination. Furthermore, we will combine struggles against social oppression and discrimination as well as struggles against climate crisis with the workers' movement. March to Socialism will fight for the enlargement of democratic rights. The decaying capitalist system has been consistently retreating in the political arena, too, leaving only a shell democracy. There have been numerous retreats in the democratic arena, such as corruption, collusion with capitalists, rejection of people's control, bureaucratic oppression, violence of state apparatus, bad laws, etc. Against this, we will fight for full-scale enlargement of the democratic rights of workers and people. Enlarging such democratic rights will be a popular weapon for the working class to unfold struggles against the capitalist system. Furthermore, in those struggles workers and people will be vividly aware unless destroying the capitalist political structure and establishing workers' power based on direct control and operation of workers and people, the fundamental rights of workers and people will not be realized. Comrades! We never agree with those who say another world is impossible. The potential power of the working class is endlessly abundant, and victory is possible! March to Socialism invites you to the road to victory! For the socialist workers' party and the emancipation of the working class! (This document was adopted unanimously by all participants in the founding congress of March to Socialism in South Korea on Oct 1st, 2022.)

2022-10-16 | 조회 409