This paper was submitted as a presentation for the ‘Debate: The Russia-Ukraine War from the Perspective of Russian Ethnic Minorities’ held on Friday, August 29. The lecture will cover the Russian colonial empire and its impact on the indigenous populations of the North, Siberia, and the Far East. My presentation will primarily focus on the Siberian region of Russia, specifically the Buryats, as that is the ethnic group to which my mother belongs. I won’t be able to cover in depth the colonization of the Siberian Turkic people, the notable representation being the Tuva and Sakha people, as I am not that familiar with their culture and do not wish to distort their history. I will be covering the colonization of Mongolic people, but would still like to acknowledge the colonization of Siberian Turkic, Uralic, Tungustic, Paleosiberian, Eskaleut, and Sino-Tibetan people. Introduction Buryatia is currently a region owned by the Russian Federation, and it encompasses the area south, east, and a bit of land west of Lake Baikal. The north of Baikal is the region of Irkutsk. The capital of Buryatia is currently Ulan Ude. The area is around 351,000 m2. The population is around 978,000. This area will be the focus of our conversation along with mention of Irkutsk. Life before Russian Empire The Buryat people, much like Mongolians, lived a nomadic lifestyle while herding cattle, such as horses and sheep. There is also a distinct group of Buryats in the west of Baikal Lake, as the area was good for crops, which would take on a more pastoral lifestyle, like having wooden homes instead of yurts. But still, it is worth mentioning that Buryats across Siberia valued hunting, much like Mongolians did. Like most Mongolians, the Buryat people were also practicing shamanism until the 16th century. But they would convert eventually to Tibetan Buddhism during the 16th century when the religion took over Mongolia. With that being said, some Western forest Buryats kept shamanism. Buryats also participated in bartering, exchanging animal products for Chinese textiles and metals. Buryat society consisted of the khan aristocracy that had reigned over other classes of Buryats. East Buryats had rich herdsmen called noyon. Despite that, there was no privatised land ownership, and the main mode of exchange could be classified as mutual aid or reciprocity. Buryats would be under Chingis Khan’s rule in the 13th century, keeping some semblance of autonomy under his rulership. Buryats would also engage in conflicts where they victimized the Tungus and Samoyed people. Such conflict led the Buryats to be known to Russians as the Tungus, and the Samoyed people had been robbed of their belongings by the Buryats long before Russians could take anything from them. First contact with Russians, the conquest 20 years after becoming aware of the Buryat people, the Russians decided to conquer them. Silver was the main driver of the conquest as the Baikal region had an abundance of it. The first attack happened in 1628, in Enisey. The Russians did not loot them initially, but did kidnap the women and children. The following year, Commander Beketov started taxing the Buryat people. By the end of the conquest of Angar, the renaming of stolen land was established. The land was renamed to Bratsk, Idynsk, and Irkutsk. Buryats would try to defend by establishing anti-Russian campaigns in 1634 that would continue until 1641. One of the biggest resistance campaigns that followed suit in 1644 led to the complete siege of Irkutsk. It was the 1640s when the Buryats realized they couldn’t fight off the Russians, so they moved down to Mongolia. Most Buryats were forced to move elsewhere (typically Mongolia) when their lands were stolen. Russian Cossacks were used to take over Buryatia, Russian Cossacks being the East Slavic and Eastern Christian people. Life under the Russian Tsar Slavery was not a concept before its introduction by the Russians. The Khans and Noyons of Buryatia would then start exploiting the non-aristocratic class for products. Buryats were used by the Russians in the same way as Cossacks were, mostly posted on the Chinese border. A law of Aliens would be created in 1822, where 3 classifications were available: pastorals, nomads, and strays. Among these, the Buryats were classified as nomads, and that meant for them that a native Buryat authority would be responsible for the Buryats in their steppe administration. Each steppe administration would have its own jurisdiction. The authority would either be chosen (not specified by whom) or inherited through the aristocracy. Though Buryats were given autonomous authority, they were not given rights to their land. The land belonged to the Russian Empire. The land was to be used by the nomads and to be guarded from unauthorized theft. The Russian Government would utilize the existence of the aristocracy to extort Buryat labor. The Question of Religion Buryats were forced into two religions, Christianity and Buddhism, all while being forced to discard shamanism. The West would enforce Christianity, while the south-east would force Buddhism upon them. For half a century, the Christians tried to convert Buryats through means of violent baptism and burning of shamanic relics. The first attempt at christianization fails, but the second time the missionaries learn the Buryat language, schools open, and Christian literature is created. The Christians try to seem benevolent, but after the first attempt, the Buryats mostly resort to Buddhism as resistance against forced Christianization. The baptized Buryats were forced to abandon their cultural heritage. The Russians noticed the resistant nature within the acceptance of Buddhism among Buryats, so they would try to cut contact between Buryats and Mongolians, the main exporters of Buddhism, and Petr I would have staunch anti-Buddhist reforms in his rulership, unlike Catherine II. The education of Buryats in Russian went smoothly due to the fact that, unlike Mongolians, Buryats were mostly illiterate. However, Buryats still resisted by refusing to learn to read in general. The 20th century The 20th century is when the Russian Empire tried to actually eradicate Buryat cultural heritage along with the autonomy of Buryat steppe regions, whereas in the beginning, some cultural heritage was left along with governmental autonomy. As resistance, the Buryats demanded democratic autonomy and for Buryat-taught schools to open. Due to this, Buryats start to Russify; the western Buryats give their children Russian names while the eastern Buryats try to keep their cultural names. The Revolution of the Soviet Union Nationalist tendencies already started to become popular among Buryat people, with demands for language change from Russian to Buryat in the region and invasive land reforms occurring during the 20th century. During the revolution of 1917, some Buryats joined the white faction in hopes of building a pan-Mongolist state independent from Russia via lama Neise-Gegeen. But this endeavor fails, and more Burats mostly join the Red Army. However, as the tensions rise in Russia, the Buryats simply evacuate and immigrate to Mongolia and China. The Soviet Union and Stalinism The soviet union does a good job of uniting West and East Buryats under the autonomous soviet socialist republic of Buryatia. This strengthens the idea of pan-mongolism even more. But alas, in 1937, the Buryat intellectual and political elite was accused of collaborating with the Japanese, which led to the loss of 6 districts. The Koryo people also suffered from similar accusations, which Stalin's regime forced them to move from Siberia to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. That is why the percentage of Koryo people in Russia is much smaller than that of neighboring Central Asian countries. The Leninist government was not opposed to pan-mongolism in the beginning, but during Stalin’s 1937 repressions, the Soviet government took drastic measures against pan-mongolism. This takes form in anti-religion campaigns, collectivization, and russification. This led to the imprisonment of many lamas and shamans, especially as shamans were cultural relics for Buryats to hold onto. Also, as I mentioned about the Alien law, unlike nomads, peasants had rights similar to serfs during the imperial era of Russia. So the reclassification of the Buryat people into semi-nomadic was done to urbanize the population. This is also the era when the Buryat language was forced to use Cyrillic, much like the Mongolian language. While the Buryats emigrated to Mongolia, they would also later face repression by Mongolia’s Choibalsan, as he believed that the Chinese, Kazakhs, and Buryats were the enemies of the revolution. After The Fall Of Soviet Union Before the fall of the USSR, the Buryat people would make an appeal to the USSR in 1990 for the rehabilitation and reunification of the territories on the basis that they were repressed people, to which Yeltsin’s administration at the time replied that since Buryats were highly educated, they could not achieve the status of repressed people. There is some truth to the overeducation of Buryats, as Buryat people during the USSR would quickly strive to achieve academic success under the USSR, all while not being able to use the Mongolian script for their alphabet. The UN would even recognise the repression of the Buryat people, but the now Russian Federation, in 1994, would not. Then, after the fall of the USSR, in 2007, the Buryat people would make another appeal. The appeal remained unanswered. Ridicule followed in the newspapers on this appeal. 2007 to 2010 would mark the years when propaganda of voluntary entry began to circulate, as Putin would try to rewrite history to paint a picture of Buryats willingly joining Russia for the sake of protection. This, of course, is false, as I have described the colonization of the Buryat people. Soon after, the Buryat language would be banned from schools, calling the language a dog dialect. The same resource plundering from the Russian Empire still exists, as resources (metals) would be all centralized economically in Moscow. The War on Ukraine And now, with the current war in Ukraine, the Buryat people are used as troops, bribed with money to participate in a war that doesn’t serve them. The Republic of Buryatia is currently one of the most militarized regions, much like other eastern regions of Russia. Buryatia, along with Chukotka and Tuva, is one of the poorest regions in Russia. Economic disadvantage comes from the fact that resources (like metal) are being economically extorted from the west of Russia. Along with that, there is not much money to make in Buryatia, as most citizens live off less than minimum wage. The economic disadvantage of Buryatia made it an easy target for money-based militarization. The Buryat troops were the first to enter the territories of Ukraine. 2.5% of Russian troops dead were found to be Buryats, while the population of Buryats in Russia only consisted of 0.35%. This means that per 100,000 people, 252 people would die during combat. The Moscow region lost 1200 people in a city with 13 million, which means only 9 deaths per 100,000 people. This percentile discrepancy reflects that regions with indigenous populations are being targeted and heavily militarized, while Moscow and other western regions do not have heavy militarization programs. The Khabarovsk region has also been targeted for militarization, specifically the indigenous people of Khabarovsk. There is heavy propaganda aimed at the Buryat people to join the war effort. Slogans like “Russians don’t surrender, Buryats don’t run” are used, all the while the Kremlin government heavily suppresses forms of protesting, especially protesting against the war and the government. Towards A Decolonized Revolution, Towards Internationalism The USSR, the bastion of anticolonialism, has failed to truly free the indigenous population of the former Russian Empire. Indigenous people did not feel much representation during the revolution of the Soviet Union, as they simply immigrated, seeing no hope in the revolution for autonomy or independence. Although at first the Soviet Union did support pan-mongolism to some extent, Stalin’s regime would drastically oppose the idea of pan-mongolism and would punish the indigenous population for resistance against the continuation of being under Russia’s former rule. The war in Ukraine also brought about a new rise in nationalism among indigenous populations stricken with war. Many desire complete freedom or maximum autonomy for the indigenous population and their lands, while some revert to nationalism via pan-mongolism, notably among Buryats and Sakha peoples. Such nationalist tendencies in the liberation movement of Buryatia are not enough for the complete liberation of the Buryat people. The pan-Mongolist stance that most Buryat revolutionaries take is a stance that will ultimately lead to the merging of Buryatia with Mongolia, reminiscent of the Chingis Khan empire. Although I see the appeal of pan-mongolism, as Buryatia does not have the power to seek independence alone, that is exactly why I believe that freedom of Buryatia will be fulfilled only via an internationalist anti-colonial resistance movement. Buryat people must unite with those who are also colonized, not only in Russia, but across the world, to bring about freedom for all colonized lands. I have told this story to encourage comrades fighting for the revolution to put into consideration the experience of the colonized and to liberate us, not only from traditional Western imperialism of Europe and the neo liberal colonization done by the US, but also to examine Russia as an imperialist force that could not bring about the liberation of indigenous people during the Soviet Union.

2025-09-05 | 조회 353

This paper was submitted as a presentation for the ‘Debate: The Russia-Ukraine War from the Perspective of Russian Ethnic Minorities’ held on Friday, August 29. ※Footnotes have been omitted. Please refer to the attached file below for the footnotes. [Index] 1. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is nothing but reactionary imperialist aggression. - Putin and Lenin have completely opposite views. - Stalin destroyed the workers' state through counterrevolution and revived the national oppression on the Ukrainian. - Today, Russia's invasion only strengthens far-right fascism in Ukraine. 2. Can Western Imperialism and NATO Save Ukraine? - NATO's eastward expansion policy created Russia's reactionary military response. - Western imperialism demands submission and minerals from Ukraine. - The Russia-Ukraine war must be viewed within the totality of imperialist hegemonic conflict. 3. What to Do in an Era of Crisis and War? - The Ukraine-Russia war has opened an era of crisis and war. - The Thread of the Movement. - The Primary Task of Korean Socialists for Peace in Ukraine. The Russia-Ukraine War began with Russia's invasion on February 24, 2022. Putin boasted he would subjugate Ukraine within three days, but events did not unfold that way. Russia succeeded in occupying the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, followed by most of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. However, its attempt to capture the capital, Kyiv, along a direct route failed. Ukraine subsequently launched several counteroffensives. These yielded some limited successes, such as recapturing the city of Kherson in November 2022 and securing Robotyne in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in 2023. In August 2024, Ukraine also launched an offensive in Russia's Kursk Oblast, but it did not achieve significant results. Consequently, the front lines have now solidified, with Russia occupying most of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as significant portions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Trump recently held separate talks with Putin and Zelensky about a potential ceasefire and peace deal. Trump seeks to reduce costs in the Ukraine war to focus resources on his strategic goal of confronting China, yet simultaneously avoids appearing to make excessive concessions to Russia. Trump continues his zigzag approach, demanding greater concessions from both Zelenskyy and Putin, making it difficult to predict when a ceasefire or peace agreement might actually materialize. However, it can be clearly stated that none of the entities conducting or involved in this war are on the side of the suffering Ukrainian and Russian working people. Regarding this reactionary war, 노동해방투쟁연대(No-Hae-Tu), one of the predecessor organizations of March to Socialism, issued a statement on March 1, 2022: "Russia must immediately halt its invasion of Ukraine! The United States and the European Union must dissolve NATO! All imperialist powers must cease their hegemonic rivalry, war preparations, and acts of oppression and plunder!" These slogans remain as valid today as they were then. This article will address several aspects surrounding these slogans. 1. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is nothing but reactionary imperialist aggression. Putin and Lenin have completely opposite views. Ukraine endured prolonged national oppression under Tsarist Russia prior to the 1917 Russian Revolution. After the 1917 Revolution, Russian socialists adopted the correct position of guaranteeing Ukraine's right to national self-determination. Lenin spoke at the time about the right to national self-determination for Ukraine and other peripheral nations under Tsarist rule, and their republics' "right to secede from the Soviet Union." Putin's condemnation of this when he declared the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 profoundly illustrates how completely opposed their positions are. The following is an excerpt from Lenin's June 1917 writing, revealing what it meant to support Ukraine's right to national self-determination for the unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers and peasants, within the historical context of national oppression under Tsarist Russia. No democrat, let alone a socialist, will venture to deny the complete legitimacy of the Ukraine’s demands. And no democrat can deny the Ukraine’s right to freely secede from Russia. Only unqualified recognition of this right makes it possible to advocate a free union of the Ukrainians and the Great Russians, a voluntary association of the two peoples in one state. Only unqualified recognition of this right can actually break completely and irrevocably with the accursed tsarist past, when everything was done to bring about a mutual estrangement of the two peoples so close to each other in language, territory, character and history. Accursed tsarism made the Great Russians executioners of the Ukrainian people, and fomented in them a hatred for those who even forbade Ukrainian children to speak and study in their native tongue. Russia’s revolutionary democrats, if they want to be truly revolutionary and truly democratic, must break with that past, must regain for themselves, for the workers and peasants of Russia, the brotherly trust of the Ukrainian workers and peasants. This cannot be done without full recognition of the Ukraine’s rights, including the right to free secession. We do not favour the existence of small states. We stand for the closest union of the workers of the world against “their own” capitalists and those of all other countries. But for this union to be voluntary, the Russian worker, who does not for a moment trust The Russian or the Ukrainian bourgeoisie in anything, now stands for the right of the Ukrainians to secede, without imposing his friendship upon them, but striving to win their friendship by treating them as an equal, as an ally and brother in the struggle for socialism. In his speech launching the invasion of Ukraine, Putin condemned Lenin's position as follows: Let us begin with the fact that modern Ukraine was created entirely by Russia, or more precisely, by Bolshevik Communist Russia. This process began practically immediately after the 1917 Revolution, and Lenin and his comrades did this in a manner that was extremely rude to Russia. It was a manner of separating and seizing Russia's own historical territories from Russia. … From the perspective of Russia and the Russian peoples' historical destiny, Lenin's principles of state-building were far worse than mere mistakes. Putin's argument is that after the Russian Revolution led by Lenin, the workers' state adhered to the principle of national self-determination and enshrined it in the Soviet constitution, which enabled Ukraine's independence and thereby harmed the Russian people. Clearly, Putin is not a successor to Lenin's workers' internationalism but to the Great Russian nationalism that followed Stalin. Putin's rhetoric that invading Ukraine was unavoidable to protect Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk from fascism is a carbon copy of Hitler's rhetoric a month before annexing Austria, when he claimed German expansion was inevitable "to protect the German people." “There are more than ten million Germans in states adjoining Germany which before 1866 were joined to the bulk of the Gemman nation by a national link. … political separation from the Reich may not lead to deprivation of rights, that is the general rights of racial self-detemmination which were solemnly promised to us in Wilson's Fourteen Points as a condition for the armistice. … But just as England stands up for her interests all over the globe, presentday Germany will know how to guard its more restricted interests. To these interests of the German Reich belong also the protection of those German peoples who are not in a position to secure along our frontiers their political and philosophical freedom by their own efforts. Stalin destroyed the workers' state through counterrevolution and revived the national oppression on the Ukrainian. Today, Ukraine exists upon the legacy of the state-capitalist Soviet Union that emerged from Stalin's counterrevolution. Let us briefly examine that history. Until the early to mid-1920s, the Russian workers' state respected the autonomy and national demands of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, based on the right to national self-determination formalized by Lenin. In 1923, the 'indigenization' policy was introduced across the entire Soviet Union, urging measures tailored to the nationalities and cultures of each republic. This policy was also aimed squarely at Ukraine. … The proportion of Ukrainians, which had been 35 percent of government employees and 23 percent of Communist Party members in 1922, rose to 54 percent and 52 percent, respectively, between 1926 and 1927 … The use of the Ukrainian language was also encouraged. Government employees who did not speak Ukrainian were required to take Ukrainian language courses and were dismissed if they failed to learn it within a year. The proportion of Ukrainian-language government documents and publications rose from 20 percent in 1922 to 70 percent in 1927. Party work was also conducted in Ukrainian. … Ukrainization also took place in school education. By 1929, 80 percent of general education and 30 percent of university education were conducted exclusively in Ukrainian. The Ukrainization of newspapers and books was also promoted, increasing the proportion of Ukrainian-language publications among all publications from 27 percent in 1922 to over 50 percent in 1927. … Historian and former President of the Central Rada, Hrushevsky, also returned and began researching Ukrainian history as a full member of the Academy. … Ukrainization affected religion as well. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church had long sought independence from Moscow. In 1920, the 'Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church' was established, and in 1921, the Bishop of Kiev and All Ukraine was appointed. Ukrainian, not Church Slavonic, was used in the rites of the Autocephalous Church. However, after Stalin seized power within the Soviet Communist Party in the mid-1920s and unilaterally pushed forward the Five-Year Plan for economic development based on the theory of socialism in one country during the 1930s, systematic national oppression against Ukraine was revived. One of the horrific consequences was the Ukrainian famine of 1932. Stalin suppressed Ukrainian resistance to ethnic oppression and famine with brutal purges. Ukrainization continued into the early 1930s, though crackdowns began as early as the late 1920s. The turning point came when Stalin (1879-1953) seized power in 1927, expelling rivals like Trotsky (1879-1940) and Zinoviev (1883-1936) after Lenin (1879-1924), who was principled yet tactically flexible, died at age 53. ... As described earlier, Stalin sometimes viewed peasants as a force resisting socialism, believing he had no choice but to employ harsh means to integrate them into his vision of a socialist system. ... This led to the collectivization of agriculture, which began in 1928 and was enforced starting in 1929. … The peasants resisted. Those forced into collective farms slaughtered their livestock for food or sold them off. Between 1928 and 1932, Ukraine lost half its livestock. Yet the Party and government mobilized every means to push forward collectivization. Those who resisted were arrested and sent to Siberia. … This collectivization in Ukraine proceeded rapidly in 1930 and 1931. As a result, the proportion of collectivized farms in Ukraine rose from 3.4 percent in 1928 to 91.3 percent by 1935. … Collectivization may have contributed to the perpetuation of Stalin and Party rule, but it brought catastrophic consequences to Ukraine. The result was the Great Famine of 1932-1933. In 1930, Ukraine's grain production was relatively good at 21 million tons, with government requisitions amounting to 7.6 million tons. This requisition volume was already double that of the 1920s. 1931 saw a poor harvest, yielding only 14 million tons, 65 percent of the previous year's amount, yet the requisition volume remained unchanged. In 1932, production again fell to 14 million tons, matching the previous year's poor harvest. This decline in yields was primarily caused by the chaos resulting from collectivization. ... Farmers resisted this procurement method, but the Party and government in Moscow pushed it through forcefully. Party activists had the legal right to seize grain from farmhouses. Groups of urban Party activists visited farms, going door to door, even breaking down floors to find grain. Those who were not starving were considered to have hidden food. A law was enacted stating that those who hid food were considered to have stolen socialist property and were subject to the death penalty. Thus, the famine reached its peak by the spring of 1933. The famine occurred within the Soviet Union itself, specifically in Ukraine and the North Caucasus. It was an extremely abnormal situation: it was not the urban dwellers but the grain-producing peasants who starved, and it occurred not in the grain-poor central regions of Russia but in the breadbasket of Ukraine. Farmers ate rats, tree bark, and leaves for lack of bread. Numerous accounts also describe cannibalism. Entire villages were wiped out. Khrushchev's memoirs recount an anecdote: a train arrived at Kiev Station loaded with the bodies of starved people, having continuously picked up corpses from Poltava all the way to Kiev. … The exact number of famine victims remains unknown because the Soviet government concealed it. One scholar estimated between 3 and 6 million. After independence, According to Everything About Ukraine (1998), which includes the official Ukrainian position and a foreword by President Kuchma (1938-), 3.5 million people starved to death in the Ukrainian Republic during this famine. Population decline, including reduced birth rates, reached 5 million. Additionally, approximately 1 million Ukrainians residing in the North Caucasus lost their lives. According to Gorbachev (1931-), who hails from the North Caucasus and whose maternal lineage is believed to be Ukrainian, one-third of his own village perished in this famine. … The first characteristic of this famine is that it was an artificial famine caused by forced collectivization and grain requisitioning, and it was not inevitable. In this sense, some scholars point out that this famine was a genocide comparable to the Holocaust perpetrated by the Jews. The second characteristic is that Russia itself hardly suffered from this famine. This has led to the theory that Stalin deliberately orchestrated it to weaken Ukrainian nationalism. Evidence cited includes Stalin's statement, "The national question is the peasant question," and a 1930 Pravda article stating, "Collectivization in Ukraine has the special task of destroying the basis of Ukrainian nationalism (agriculture based on individual peasant farms)." The third characteristic is that this famine was concealed as much as possible within the Soviet Union. Officially, it was treated as if it did not exist. ... Even by 1986, the Soviet-controlled history of Ukraine merely stated that 'there was a severe food problem,' making no mention whatsoever of the famine itself. … With Stalin's consolidation of power, restrictions began to be imposed on Ukrainian autonomy. This trend intensified as Ukrainians resisted agricultural collectivization and grain requisitioning. Attacks also began against the intellectual cultural figures active in the 1920s. In 1931, the history department of the Hrushevsky Academy was closed. He was exiled to Russia and died in isolation in the Caucasus in 1934. Around 1932, purges of Communist Party members commenced. Since the Great Purge across the entire Soviet Union occurred from 1936 to 1938, the purges in Ukraine effectively began several years earlier. ... Stalin blamed Ukrainian Communist Party members for the famine that struck in 1933. That same year, he drove Skrypnyk (1872-1933), a veteran Bolshevik who had promoted the Ukrainization of education and served as Education Commissar (Minister) of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, to suicide. Other influential party members who had pushed for Ukrainization also vanished abruptly, either committing suicide or being exiled. It is said that the Ukrainian Communist Party lost 100,000 members between 1933 and 1934. … From 1936 to 1938, the targets of the purges expanded to include all Soviet citizens, including Ukrainians. Seventeen ministers of the Ukrainian government were arrested and executed, while Prime Minister Lyubchenko (1897-1937) committed suicide. A hundred and seventy thousand members, representing 37 percent of the Ukrainian Communist Party, were purged. This left the Ukrainian Communist Party in a state of collapse. By the late 1930s, the autonomy of the republics had largely been completely extinguished. … Education and culture across the entire Soviet Union were standardized and Russified. In Ukraine too, Russian-language education became mandatory. The Ukrainian alphabet, vocabulary, and grammar grew closer to Russian. Ukrainians were encouraged to read the literature of Russian authors like Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky. The proportion of Ukrainian language in newspapers and magazines also decreased. Thus, the Ukrainian culture that had flourished in the 1920s completely vanished during this period. After Stalin's death, the Khrushchev era saw some conciliatory policies toward Ukraine. However, within the larger framework, Ukraine endured persistent national oppression under the Soviet Union-which had become state capitalism after the Stalinist counter-revolution-until the Soviet collapse. The Soviet bureaucratic command economy stifled Ukraine's industrial and agricultural production. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, coupled with the revelations of historical facts like the 1930s famine and purges through Gorbachev's glasnost, unleashed Ukraine's national anger toward the Soviet Union. During the Brezhnev and Chervitsky eras in Ukraine, the use of Russian was encouraged, while the use of Ukrainian was subject to interference. ... As a result, the proportion of Ukrainian-language newspapers decreased from 46 percent to 19 percent between 1969 and 1980, and the number of books published in Ukrainian fell from 60 percent to 24 percent between 1958 and 1980. … Regarding the economic situation, the Khrushchev era retained an ambitious drive with the goal of surpassing the United States, but the economic growth rate began to gradually decline. By the Brezhnev era, the economy had entered a state of stagnation universally acknowledged. The annual growth rate of Ukrainian industry during the Fifth Five-Year Plan (1951-1955) was 13.5 percent, but by the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (1981-1985), thirty years later, it had fallen to 3.5 percent. Industrialization and urbanization caused severe energy shortages, and from the 1950s to the 1970s, massive dams were successively built on the Dnieper River, transforming it into a series of artificial lakes. … Agriculture throughout the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, stagnated. By the late Brezhnev era, importing grain from the Soviet Union became commonplace. This situation stemmed from inefficiencies caused by bureaucratic control, diminished work motivation due to the absence of profit incentives and competition. This point is conversely demonstrated by the high productivity of private vegetable gardens attached to homes, where profit incentives operated. In 1970, private vegetable gardens, which covered only a few percent of Ukraine's total farmland, accounted for 36 percent of farm household income. … The first major catalyst for distrust of the Soviet system in Ukraine was the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion. On April 26, 1986, the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located about 100 kilometers north of Kiev, exploded. Four percent of the 192 tons of nuclear fuel was released into the atmosphere, dispersing radiation equivalent to 500 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs. While the accident itself was an unprecedented disaster, the Soviet Union's cover-up structure further exacerbated the situation. Gorbachev had been in power for just over a year, and glasnost had not yet taken hold, so the accident was concealed until the 28th. Consequently, many lives that could have been saved were lost, and tens of thousands of people still suffer from the aftereffects today. ... The Soviet Union, driven by its obsession with production, had long been almost indifferent to environmental issues. When problems arose, they were simply concealed. Ukraine boasted of being the Soviet Union's primary heavy and chemical industrial zone, but in reality, pollutants from factories and mines were overflowing. Southern and eastern Ukraine became some of the most heavily polluted areas in the Soviet Union, leading to serious health problems for residents. As glasnost took hold, pent-up grievances erupted. Movements emerged to clarify the long-tabooed 'blank' in history. The famine of 1932-1933 was openly discussed, and mass graves of people murdered by the secret police during the 1930s and 1940s were discovered. Under the Soviet Union's weakened grip, Ukraine's independence movement began in 1989. In the March 1990 elections for the Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council), the parliament of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, forces advocating Ukrainian independence won a quarter of the seats. On July 16, 1990, the Ukrainian Supreme Council issued a declaration of sovereignty. On August 24, 1991, it adopted a declaration of independence almost unanimously. Subsequently, on December 1, 1991, independence was confirmed by a referendum with 90.2 percent approval. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent state. Ukraine inherited a corrupt bureaucratic ruling class (oligarchs) from the Soviet Union, a legacy that continues to oppress the Ukrainian people to this day. During the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Euromaidan movement, 'end corruption' was a common slogan among the Ukrainian people. Following the Soviet collapse, Ukraine's political trajectory has oscillated between pro-Russian and pro-Western ruling factions, with corruption permeating both camps. Zelensky, elected in 2019 on a platform of "corruption eradication," is now embroiled in corruption scandals himself. In July 2025, large-scale protests erupted against Zelensky's bill to control anti-corruption agencies. Today, Russia's invasion only strengthens far-right fascism in Ukraine. Putin cited the growth of 'neo-Nazis' in Ukraine as justification for the invasion. Yet, in reality, far-right and fascism is indeed growing in Ukraine. Volodymyr Ishchenko, a Ukrainian sociologist and editor of 'Lefteast', described the state of Ukraine's far-right in an interview with the French socialist magazine Revolution Permanente as follows: … For example, in France the far right, mainly the National Rally, Le Pen’s party, is way less extreme than those movements we discuss in Ukraine. Le Pen’s party probably doesn’t use Nazi symbols, and has a more sophisticated attitude towards the Vichy collaboration during the Second World War. They’re trying to detoxify themselves. It’s not like this in Ukraine and you mentioned Stephan Bandera, who is glorified openly; even more so, the Waffen SS is glorified, particularly by people in Azov. The scale of extremism of the Ukrainian far right is way higher than the western one. Recently they had an international conference Nation Europa in Lviv, the biggest city of western Ukraine, to which they invited groups like the Dritte Weg from Germany, Casa Pound from Italy, and similar neo-Nazi groups from many European countries. From Ukraine, all the major far-right organizations participated, including Svoboda party and prominent members of Azov/National Corps. These Ukrainian parties, organizations, and military units are typically called just “far right” yet they build their international relations with the far more extreme and violent groups in the west rather than the dominant far-right parties. By the way, most of the Ukrainian military units who participated in this conference have connections to the Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR). … Unlike the major far-right parties in the west who are working on parliamentary status, the power of the far right in Ukraine has always been their capacity for street mobilization and the threat of violence. Significantly, they have not been capable of becoming electorally popular, with one exception in the 2012 elections when far-right Svoboda party won over ten percent of the votes (although they were also capable of gaining a much more significant representation in and have the largest factions in many local councils in western Ukraine). However, the main source of power has come from their capacity for extra-parliamentary mobilization in contrast to oligarchic parties or the weak liberals. The Ukrainian nationalists can rely on a political tradition that comes back to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which belonged to a family of fascist movements in inter-war Europe. ... Now Azov has become very legitimate as heroes of the war. They enjoy extraordinary media attention and project themselves as an elite unit, a statement which is ascertained by the media. Many Azov speakers have become celebrities. They also benefited from some whitewashing in the western media who used to call them neo-Nazi’sbefore 2022. Now they easily forget that part of the story. The final point is that we need to think not only about the nominal far-right but also about the complicity of the Ukrainian and western elite in the whitewashing of Ukrainian far right and ethnonationalism. … For example, Marta Havryshko, a Ukrainian historian who moved to the United States, continues to write critically about Ukrainian nationalists, Ukrainian ethno-nationalist policies, the Ukrainian far right, and she receives thousands of threats, including death threats and rape threats. In your opinion, is Azov the principal force of the Ukrainian far right? It has been severely weakened by the battle of Mariupol and Bakhmout. Do you think they will still play an important role in the future, in the recomposition of the far right? On the contrary, they expanded, they are now two brigades ? the 3rd Assault brigade and Azov brigade in the National Guard ? plus a special unit Kraken subordinated to the military intelligence. Their political attraction and media publicity has expanded enormously. Their whitewashed legitimacy has expanded too, so they’re not weakened but strengthened. Contrary to the popular myth, they have not depoliticized. What Putin doesn't mention, however, is that Russia's repeated invasions and military threats have created fertile ground for fascism to grow in Ukraine. Through this war, Ukraine's far-right elements, including the Azov Battalion, have gained the title of 'war heroes' and an opportunity to further expand their influence. To prevent the growth of fascism in Ukraine, this reactionary war must be stopped immediately. To summarize: Russia invaded Ukraine using "Ukrainian fascists" as a pretext, but this is merely a means to justify Russia's imperialist expansionist ambitions. The history of national oppression under state capitalism in the Soviet Union, which persisted for a long time after the Stalin counter-revolution, provided the conditions for far-right nationalism to grow in Ukraine. To untangle this knotted thread of history, the Russian working class must first and foremost recognize Ukraine's right to national self-determination, even today. Imperialist Russia's invasion of Ukraine is nothing but a reactionary war of aggression that strengthens Ukrainian fascism. 2. Can Western Imperialism and NATO Save Ukraine? We have discussed the historical background of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and why it is an imperialist and reactionary war of aggression. Now we turn to another aspect of the situation: the hypocrisy of NATO and Western imperialism. NATO's eastward expansion policy created Russia's reactionary military response. In 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker stated while stationing NATO forces in unified Germany, "NATO will not move one inch further east." However, this was nothing more than empty rhetoric, and NATO has continuously expanded eastward by accepting new members. Contrary to the U.S. Secretary of State's declaration at the time of German reunification that NATO would "not advance one inch further," the alliance has rapidly expanded its membership toward Russia's borders. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia received official invitations to join in 2002 and completed the accession process two years later. Albania and Croatia joined in 2009, and North Macedonia joined in 2020. Ukraine, which shares a vast physical border with Russia, applied for the Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 2008 as part of the NATO accession process and formally set membership as its goal in 2014 following the Euromaidan protests. During his invasion of Ukraine, Putin also cited James Baker's words in a speech, using NATO's persistent eastward expansion as justification for his aggression. Indeed, NATO has repeatedly expanded eastward since the Soviet Union's dissolution, increasing its military threat to Russia. While this does not justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine, It is clear that NATO's continued eastward expansion has provoked Putin's reactionary response in the form of the war in Ukraine. [Map showing NATO expansion since 1997] NATO has continuously expanded its influence under the pretext of Russian military threats. However, as German socialist Nathaniel Flakin points out, these threats are deliberately exaggerated. At this moment, NATO countries are spending historic sums to arm the Ukrainian government. The U.S. Congress, including “socialists” in the Democratic Party, just voted for $40 billion for additional weapons. Germany’s capitalists want an additional €100 billion for their army. We are told that this is necessary to “protect democracy,” not just in Ukraine but around the world. … The reality, of course, is that the army of Russia’s corrupt regime can barely grab slivers from one of the poorest countries in Europe. NATO’s new militarism has nothing to do with defense ? it’s about shoring up imperialist hegemony and preparing for greater confrontations with China. All these new weapons will be used for new imperialist adventures, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. A similar discussion was going on in 1914. The German Empire claimed that it needed to defend itself against the Russian autocracy, which was indeed the most barbaric state in Europe. The German generals told the socialist leaders that the war was about defending the limited freedoms enjoyed by the working class in Germany. The czar, after all, allowed no socialist organizing of any kind. But these same German generals then abolished workers’ right to strike, to assemble, or even express their opinion ? the “defense of democracy” was used to justify a state of siege. In her pamphlet, Luxemburg pointed out the absurdity of the claim that Russia was about to conquer Germany: “One might with as much justification assume that the Tsar desires to annex Europe or the moon.” Today, it is even more ridiculous that Putin could claim Poland, much less threaten people in the United States. The greatest threat to working people comes from the NATO armies that have unparalleled means to rain down death all over the planet. NATO is an imperialist war machine serving American and European expansionism. NATO presents itself as a 'defensive' alliance whose sole purpose is to defend member states from potential aggression. However, NATO has actively performed an 'aggressive role' under the guise of 'humanitarian aid' and 'civilian protection' to expand the interests of US imperialism. Prime examples include the 1999 Kosovo War, the 2001-2021 Afghanistan War, and the 2011 intervention in the Libyan Civil War. The first joint attack operation in NATO’s history was its incursion in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Serbian forces in 1995, in the context of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and the successive wars of independence in the region between 1991 and 2001. But it was in 1999, during the Kosovo war, that NATO unleashed all of its military might. Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro were bombed by 600 planes from thirteen countries, resulting in the deaths of 2,500 to 5,700 civilians, with thousands of others injured, and tremendous material and environmental damage caused by the use of uranium bombs. The justification used for NATO’s intervention was the need to stop the ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbian forces in Kosovo, which had carried out heinous crimes against the civilian population. However, its objective was not to defend the legitimate right to self-determination of Kosovo Albanians, but fundamentally to install a pro-US government that would expand NATO’s presence in Russia’s area of ??influence in the Balkans. The invasion of Afghanistan was justified with the excuse that bin Laden, leader of the organization behind the 9/11 attacks, was taking refuge there. But the interests of the United States and Europe in the region went further, to include the not just Muslim Afghanistan but the Arab World as well. Controlling that key region was seen as providing a geopolitical advantage over Russia and China. War in the region created huge profits for companies in the imperialist aggressor countries. The war in Afghanistan lasted two decades and ended with the humiliating departure of the NATO armies, with the country returned to the hands of a Taliban government. As a result of the war, the population was devastated — the average age of the population today is 18. The war left hundreds of thousands dead, and outright civil war remains a possibility. Yet another of the consequence of the invasion of Afghanistan is the proliferation of xenophobic policies and discrimination against the Muslim population in the NATO states’ own countries. … For five months in 2011, NATO bombed and intervened militarily in the North African country of Libya. On March 17, the Security Council voted “to take the necessary measures to protect civilians” and more than 20 countries participated either by sending weapons or becoming directly involved in the conflict. NATO’s actions were aimed at recovering an offensive position in the region in the context of the revolutionary process in the Middle East and North Africa known as the Arab Spring. Muammar Gaddafi, president of Libya for 42 years, was one of the region’s leaders ousted as a result of Arab Spring mobilizations. He had enjoyed a good relationship with the Soviet Union while in power, but his government had been deteriorating for years. The United States and Europe, in addition to participating militarily, financed rebel groups with weapons and training. Gaddafi was assassinated by a mob of US-backed opponents on October 11, 2011 while an internal struggle broke out in the country that divided power into two governments. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laughed about it, remarking “We came, we saw, he died.” NATO took advantage of these uprisings not for “humanitarian aid,” but to increase its territorial control by installing a new government favorable to Western interests. Libya plays a key role in the geopolitics of the region due to its large gas and oil reserves, in addition to being strategically located for controlling refugees fleeing famine and conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. In this war, France and England directed military operations and benefited the most from the oil deals. Far from peace, Libya continues to be plagued by a civil war. NATO forces caused a genocide in the region. The rights of Libyans were violated and millions of people were displaced as a result of hunger and utter destruction. Western imperialism demands submission and minerals from Ukraine. In February this year, Trump openly humiliated Zelensky during their meeting. A Journalist and Vice President J.D. Bans poured out rude remarks, saying Zelensky didn't wear a suit or show enough gratitude to the US. Trump repeatedly told Zelensky, "You have no cards (to negotiate with)," blatantly demanding submission to the US. Zelensky left the meeting without signing the mineral agreement, visibly angry, but ultimately had no choice but to accept the U.S. demands. In May, the U.S. and Ukraine established the "U.S.-Ukraine Investment and Reconstruction Fund," each contributing 50%, enabling U.S. involvement in Ukraine's mineral and energy resource investments. While a clause stipulates that net profits from a decade of mineral industry investment would be split evenly, with funds allocated for Ukraine's reconstruction, it is evident that the U.S. stands to gain substantial profits under the mineral agreement. This is because expanding the actual infrastructure and fully operationalizing the mineral industry will require more than ten years. The agreement also includes provisions for future U.S. military aid to be considered as contributions to the fund. Trump covets Ukraine's minerals due to competition with China. Ukraine holds vast deposits of essential rare minerals like graphite, titanium, and lithium. These are natural resources the US desperately needs to gain an edge over China in future industries (AI, semiconductors, batteries, electric vehicles, etc.). Trump seeks to secure a natural resource supply chain free from China and directly controllable by the US. China has already expanded its control over critical minerals through massive investments in South America and Africa over several decades. Today, China accounts for about 60% of global rare earth production and holds nearly 90% of the market share in the processing industry for these natural resources. The Chinese government's retaliation just days after President Trump imposed tariffs on China-imposing export restrictions on over 20 key minerals including graphite and tungsten-clearly demonstrates how critical China's advantage in natural resources is as a major threat in the trade war with the United States. Meanwhile, Trump has persistently demanded that European allies increase their defense spending to reduce America's NATO defense cost-sharing burden. He has also emphasized that European allies should shoulder a larger share of the defense cost support for Ukraine. Also, during the recent August 18 meeting between Trump and Zelensky, Zelensky had to promise Trump that Ukraine would purchase large quantities of American weapons. However, it's not just Trump's America eyeing Ukraine's mineral resources. As the war drags on and defense costs rise, traditional European allies are also increasingly focused on their own interests obtainable through Ukraine. French Minister of the Armed Forces S?bastien Lecornu recently stated bluntly that they too should have rights to minerals, as a U.S.-Ukraine mineral agreement neared completion. ("French defense industries also need access to specific raw materials") This is an assertion of their 'stakeholder rights' in sharing Ukraine's security costs. An editorial by an EU policy advisor below argues that the EU can only demand greater stakeholder rights by intervening more in Ukraine. As the EU’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, pointed out earlier this week in an interview with German media: “It cannot be that Russia gets Ukrainian territories, the USA gets natural resources and Europe pays the bill for peacekeeping. That doesn’t work.” … Ultimately, efforts to step up EU nonmilitary support for Ukraine need to happen alongside current negotiations on possible security guarantees the EU can provide. The latter can only contribute to a stable and peaceful Ukraine if the country can also build on reliable and strong European support for its economic recovery and reconstruction. And the more the EU signals willingness to step up assistance to Ukraine in all dimensions, the more credibly it can insist on having a seat at any future negotiation table. Ukraine's economy is already in ruins after three and a half years of war. Ukraine's GDP, which fell by 28.8% in 2022, barely managed to grow by 5.5% in 2023 and 2.9% in 2024, aided by international assistance. Without international aid, the Ukrainian economy is not sustainable. In the first month of Russia's offensive, the Ukrainian government attempted to cover deficits by selling government bonds and printing money. However, by year-end, Ukraine's economic size had shrunk by nearly one-third, and inflation surged over 25%. ... It is estimated that over half of Ukraine's pre-war power generation capacity was destroyed or occupied by Russia. Ukraine's Ministry of Energy has claimed that Russia attacked its energy infrastructure over 1,000 times between October 2022 and September 2024. ... Another major problem for Ukraine's economy is its workforce, estimated to have shrunk by a third. Casualties from the war, refugees who have fled abroad, and ongoing mobilization are cited as the main reasons. ... Moreover, Russia's invasion has displaced nearly a quarter of Ukraine's population. According to the UN, approximately 7 million Ukrainian refugees currently reside abroad (6.3 million of whom are in Europe), while another 4.6 million are internally displaced persons within Ukraine. It remains unclear what share of Ukraine's mineral resources the US and Europe will ultimately claim and divide among themselves. However, contrary to their rhetoric about fighting for Ukraine's 'freedom,' it is certain that the US and Europe will present Ukraine's working people with a bill demanding severe economic subjugation in exchange for defense costs. Moreover, the US and European imperialists posing as Ukraine's protectors today are the very same forces complicit in the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Can NATO's security guarantees, obtained in exchange for granting freedom to plunder Ukraine, truly bring peace to Ukraine? Pro-Russian factions within NATO, such as Slovakia and Hungary, oppose Ukraine's NATO membership. Among their arguments is this: "If Ukraine joins NATO, NATO will share a border with Russia, potentially leading to a larger war-a full-scale conflict between NATO and Russia." While Slovakia and Hungary are merely cherry-picking arguments that suit their own interests, there is truth to this. In reality, Ukraine's NATO membership, or security support from NATO allies, would only intensify the threat of war with Russia and absolutely cannot bring peace to Ukraine. The Russia-Ukraine war must be viewed within the totality of imperialist hegemonic conflict When the Russia-Ukraine war erupted, some leftists defined it not as a proxy war between imperialist powers, but as Ukraine's national liberation war against Russian aggression, arguing that NATO's arms support for Ukraine should be endorsed. However, in our view, this fails to consider the totality of capitalism surrounding the Russia-Ukraine war. German socialist Nathaniel Flakin compares the situation in the Ukraine war to the Belgian and Serbian wars during World War I, stating as follows: In his 1967 postscript to his study of Lenin’s thought, Georg Lukács highlighted the category of the “totality” as key to Leninism: “It is the totality which correctly points the way to the class-consciousness directed towards revolutionary practice. Without orientation towards totality there can be no historically true practice.” None of the socialists who support Ukraine’s war effort are considering the totality. They want us to see this war as a conflict between two unequal states ? not as part of growing tensions between the Great Powers in a time of declining U.S. hegemony. In other words, they want us to look at an arbitrarily defined part of the war, separate from the totality of global imperialism. … Here, the LIT-CI has a particularly strange position. They ask what would happen “if NATO attacks Russia,” and answer as follows: “In this situation, Russia would have to be defended, because it would mean the aggression of the imperialist NATO against a weaker and more dependent country (Russia). In other words, we would be for the defeat of NATO.” Thus, if U.S. troops were to fire on Russian forces, the LIT-CI would turn 180 degrees: They would stop supporting Zelenskyy and immediately align themselves with Russian forces. The problem, of course, is that there is no clear line between imperialist “support” for Ukraine or direct imperialist intervention. Both of the LIT-CI’s positions, support for Ukraine or hypothetical support for Russia, are wrong. They are the result of extremely mechanical thinking that fails to understand the totality of the global situation. … As most socialists would agree today, World War I was not a series of isolated wars of national liberation - it was a global conflict among imperialist powers. Socialists needed to fight for the defeat of their “own” bourgeoisie. This included the socialists in Serbia, who bravely opposed “national defense” even when the “fatherland” was threatened with destruction. Rosa Luxemburg praised the Serb socialists for voting against war credits. This position makes sense only if we look at the totality. Today, socialists in the NATO countries need to oppose their “own” imperialist power. As the tensions between the Great Powers increase, we will see new conflicts and wars - and each imperialist power will try to present their aggression in the name of “democracy” and “self-determination.” That has always been the language of war propaganda. Socialists need to fight for an independent position. This applies to Ukraine as well, where socialists need to fight for the working class to become an independent political factor, with a perspective of liberating the country from both NATO and Russian imperialism. This is the only way to put an end to reactionary wars. 3. What to Do in an Era of Crisis and War? The Ukraine-Russia war has opened an era of crisis and war. With the US-led neoliberal order already weakened in 2022, the Russia-Ukraine war has opened a new era of crisis and war. In this era, imperialist states in crisis engage in fierce political and military struggles to shift their own crises onto other nations. The genocide in Palestine, the war crisis in the Middle East, the intensified US military actions and intervention in Latin America, the rise of far-right fascism and increased military spending in Europe, and the strengthening of the North Korea-China-Russia vs. South Korea-US-Japan blocs in East Asia are all expressions of the global capitalist crisis. The Russia-Ukraine war is both an expression of this crisis and another factor deepening it. As the war drags on, Russia has been forced into a position where it must rely economically on China to survive, becoming a decisive catalyst for advancing Sino-Russian relations. At this year's Victory Day celebrations of Russia on May, Russia flaunted its alliance with China. At China's Victory Day event on September 3rd, Putin, Kim Jong-un, and Xi Jinping are scheduled to gather together. Meanwhile, NATO member states recently passed an agreement in June to increase defense spending to 5% of their respective GDPs by 2035. This means European countries must increase their existing defense budgets by two to three times or more. As defense spending rises, public finances for social welfare will decrease, and responses to the climate crisis will also be pushed to the back burner. This reactionary war, sparked by the convergence of NATO's eastward expansion policy led by the United States and Russia's expansionist ambitions, forced countless Ukrainian and Russian workers and people to point guns at each other, commit atrocities, and kill and be killed. In Ukraine, casualties are estimated at between 70,000 and 150,000, while in Russia, the death toll is estimated to be at least 95,000 and up to 200,000. As emphasized in Presentation 2, a disproportionate number of those conscripted and killed in Russia came from ethnic minorities and the impoverished working class in peripheral regions. True peace and freedom for Ukraine cannot be brought by NATO. Nor can it be brought by Russia. The only realistic alternative to end this reactionary war is to halt each country's attempts at military expansion through the international solidarity and unity of the working people of Ukraine, Russia, and the working people of Europe and Asia, advancing toward a workers' revolution. The Thread of the Movement How much potential exists today in Ukraine, Russia, and neighboring countries to stop the war and organize a workers' movement independent of both NATO and Putin? In April 2022, early in the war, railway workers in Belarus-the government of which was supporting Russian forces-deliberately sabotaged and damaged Russian military equipment shipments. Around the same time, railway workers in Greece and Italy launched strikes opposing NATO weapons shipments to Ukraine, delaying such transports for two weeks. Unfortunately, this resistance did not lead to broader international solidarity actions among workers. Nevertheless, it provides crucial clues about how workers should act in the Ukraine-Russia war. In Russia, over 1,300 people were arrested during anti-war protests led by peace groups in September 2022. In Ukraine, protests erupted last July against the Zelensky government's bill to control anti-corruption agencies. However, no news of broader popular anti-war movements has been detected yet. Meanwhile, the Belarusian railway workers mentioned earlier faced severe repression from the pro-Russian Belarusian regime. Additionally, both in Ukraine and Russia, pacifists and socialists who opposed NATO military intervention and Russia's invasion were subjected to repression and imprisoned. Repression based on nationalism and chauvinism is also intensifying. In Russia, LGBT individuals are imprisoned under the claim that "LGBT is an extremist ideology spread by the West," and children are taught hatred towards Ukraine. Conversely, in Ukraine, laws banning the use of the Russian language have been passed, and far-right fascist forces are growing. Children are now being taught to hold automatic rifles as early as middle school. They’re taught patriotism, love of the blue, white, and red flag, and hatred of Lenin, because it was Lenin who gave Ukraine self-determination. Above all, they teach children to hate Ukrainians. They are taught to hate them today so they can kill them tomorrow in senseless battles, village by village, kilometer by kilometer, for territories completely devastated in eastern Ukraine. For example, Russian is no longer taught in Ukrainian schools, even as an elective, even in overwhelmingly Russian-speaking cities like Odessa, where probably 80% or 90% of Ukrainian children speak Russian with their parents. A recently introduced bill may ban speaking Russian in schools, not just in the classroom with teachers, but even during the breaks in the private conversations of the pupils with each other. The bill has been already endorsed by the Minister of Education. Meanwhile, Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Yschenko responded negatively in an interview when asked about the current level of organization among Ukraine's working class. The working class cannot play a role in the current situation. The labor movement in Ukraine was weak well before the war. The last really massive political strike was by Donbas miners in 1993. They demanded the autonomy of Donbas and closer relations with Russia, ironically. But even that strike was so connected to the interests of the so-called “red directors” of the Soviet enterprises, who had lots of power in the immediate post-Soviet years, that they used the strike in order to push for certain concessions from the government. Eventually the strike led to snap elections and a change of the government. But since then, there’s been no really large-scale strike action. For three decades we’ve seen only small-scale strikes, typically limited to specific enterprises, and at best to some segments of the economy, and very rarely politicized. By the way, it is precisely the inability to start a political strike during the EuroMaidan revolution of 2014 led to violent escalation due to a lack of leverage over the government, which did not want to give any concessions to the protesters. That opened the opportunity for the radical nationalists to push for the violent strategy of the protests. And so, yes, after this full-scale invasion, strikes were banned. The strikes that have happened are probably informal strikes. If his analysis is correct, the Ukrainian working class unfortunately faces the difficult task of organizing itself politically. Here, the legacy of state-capitalist Soviet rule further complicates the process of forging an independent working-class alternative capable of confronting both far-right nationalism and Stalinism in Ukraine. According to Ischenko's interview, the mainstream political force classified as 'left' is the 'Communist Party of Ukraine', which has taken a position supporting Russia's invasion. Far fewer in number (even at their peak, only about 1/100th), there are Western democratic socialist and liberal left tendencies. These groups have supported the Ukrainian government since the war began and have taken positions such as volunteering for the military. However, due to the implementation of brutal conscription and the fact that a majority of the Ukrainian populace does not want the war to continue, they are cautiously reevaluating their stance on the war. Regarding the final category of leftists classified by Ischenko, he explains as follows. The third segment of the Ukrainian left is Marxist Leninist, which is a part of what I call a “neo-Soviet revival,” happening in many post-Soviet countries. They are typically organized in kruzhki - literally meaning “circles” - which are proto-political organizations, something more than just Marxist-Leninist reading groups. They’ve been way more popular in Russia, capable of establishing YouTube channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. In Russia, Belarus, Central Asia, the kruzhki may involve thousands of young people who have not lived a single day in the USSR but have some criticism of the social and political reality of their countries find some instruments on how to deal with that reality in the orthodox Marxist- Leninism. Notably, they exist and even have expanded in Ukraine too, despite the decommunization, and the rise of anti-Russian nationalism and anticommunist attitudes. Almost from the very start these groups have been both against governments and take a revolutionary defeatist position. In that situation, we may wonder if a social revolution is even possible like it was a hundred years ago as part of the collapsing Russian Empire. But nevertheless, from the very start, these groups raised a criticism of forced conscription, called for internationalism, and didn’t try to legitimate what the Ukrainian state was doing. This new Marxist current emerging in Ukraine, Russia, and other former Soviet states likely reflects a serious questioning of the reality that neither the 'pro-Western' nor the 'pro-Russian' lines are bringing freedom, bread, or peace to the working people of the former Soviet states. Many Ukrainian and Russian workers and people have already risked their lives courageously opposing the war and are consequently facing severe repression. The fact that mass struggles against the war have not yet erupted in Russia and Ukraine does not mean the direction is wrong. On the contrary, the situation where Ukrainian and Russian workers and people are oppressed and crushed by chauvinist ideology means that workers around the world, who are directly or indirectly involved in this war and somewhat freer from direct repression, must take more active action. The Primary Task of Korean Socialists for Peace in Ukraine Since the Ukraine war began, South Korea has indirectly supplied weapons to Ukraine by continuously sending 600,000 rounds of 155mm artillery shells to the US. The Washington Post reported in December 2023 that "South Korea sent more artillery shells to Ukraine via the US than all European nations combined." Meanwhile, North Korea officially confirmed in April 2025 that it had dispatched troops to Russia's Kursk region. Reports also indicate North Korea supplied 9 million artillery shells in 2024 alone. Ammunition and soldiers sent from both South and North Korea are now clashing on the battlefield through the Russia-Ukraine war. The intensifying US-China hegemonic rivalry, heightened by the Ukraine-Russia war and set to escalate further, is constantly heightening military tensions in East Asia. Should this escalate into open warfare, the likelihood of it manifesting as a proxy war on the Korean Peninsula is also very high. Demanding an end to South Korea's military intervention in Ukraine, as well as halting North Korea's war intervention, is not only an act of solidarity with the Ukrainian working people but also a struggle to prevent war from engulfing the Korean Peninsula. The road ahead remains long. Lee Jae-myung met with Trump on August 25, presenting him with a MAGA hat and a turtle ship symbolizing the MASGA deal, engaging in extreme flattery. "If President Trump acts as a peacemaker, I will diligently support him as a pacesetter," "I met with Japan beforehand and resolved all the ("comfort women") issues the President was concerned about," "The position of relying on the US for security and China for the economy is no longer sustainable," "I will increase defense spending." These are statements Lee Jae-myung made during the US-ROK summit. Every agenda item at the summit concerned imperialist great power rivalry, and Lee Jae-myung appealed at every turn that "Korea is America's ally." Through this, Lee effectively dispelled the "misunderstanding" about himself-namely, his pro-China/pro-North Korea image-and even quoted the USFK slogan "Let's go together," emphasizing Korea's role as America's subordinate partner. Furthermore, Korean capitalists pleased Trump, who seeks to revive manufacturing to maintain hegemony, by pledging an additional $150 billion in investment in the US. Of course, like the previously promised $350 billion in US investment, this is expected to be covered by loans and payment guarantees from state-run financial institutions, meaning no loss for Korean capitalists either. For the U.S., this summit was an opportunity to ask, "Whose side is Korea on?" amid intensifying great power competition. And the U.S. confirmed that Korea is firmly on its side, despite the "national interest-centered pragmatic diplomacy" outlined in the Lee Jae-myung administration's policy agenda being mere rhetoric. China immediately issued a warning following the summit. "If Korea follows U.S. orders concerning China's core interests-semiconductors, supply chains, the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea-it would be no different than tying its own fate to a dangerous cart." North Korea echoed this sentiment: "Our position of never permanently abandoning nuclear weapons is absolutely unchangeable," and "For our nuclear policy to change, the world must change, and the political-military environment on the Korean Peninsula must change." Many voices praise Lee Jae-myung's diplomatic moves as 'wise'. However, no matter how skillful Lee Jae-myung's diplomatic maneuvers may be as the head of a bourgeois state apparatus, they remain merely wise choices made within the rules of this capitalist chessboard. With each turn, this game advances toward greater war and crisis, following the logic of imperialist hegemonic rivalry. And we are not players who can watch that game from afar; we are the pieces on the chessboard, forced to witness death and tragedy right before our eyes. Without overturning this chessboard, there is no future for us. Let us begin our struggle against the Lee Jae-myung administration's strengthening of military cooperation between South Korea, the US, and Japan. Let us clearly establish the correct perspective and expand international workers' solidarity in every direction.

2025-09-05 | 조회 1,081

South Korea held its presidential election on June 3, only three years after the previous election, despite the five-year presidential term. The election was prompted by the Constitutional Court's decision on April 4 to remove former president Yoon Suk-yeol from office, following his attempted imposition of martial law on December 3. The moment the Constitutional Court handed down its ruling on April 4, the outcome of the June 3 presidential election was effectively decided. The four months between December 3 and April 4 were far more significant than the two months leading up to the election. Right after Yoon's declaration of martial law on December 3, massive protests by workers and people erupted. People who gathered at the National Assembly blocked the military from taking control of the building, and within two and a half hours, the National Assembly passed a resolution demanding the lifting of martial law. Within six hours, the martial law was lifted. As the protests by workers and people grew explosively, the impeachment motion against Yoon was passed by the National Assembly just 11 days after the martial law was declared. Many people recalled the impeachment of Park Geun-hye eight years ago and believed that Yoon was now over. However, the situation was very different from eight years ago. Above all, far-right forces had grown significantly. Yoon, who declared he would “fight to the end” against the National Assembly's impeachment motion, emerged as a hero of the far-right. Centered on Christian fundamentalists, the far-right launched a massive counterattack in January and February. On January 15, Yoon was arrested, and on the 19th, a warrant for his detention was issued. In response, the far-right forces instigated violent riots at the Western District Court in Seoul, which had issued the warrant. The mass rallies organized by the far-right forces grew increasingly larger, and by early March, they surpassed the scale of the pro-impeachment rallies. Public opposition to Yoon's impeachment also grew from 20-25% to around 35%. On March 8, a judge succumbed to pressure from far-right forces and released Yoon on absurd grounds. Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court's ruling, which was expected to be issued by mid-March at the latest, was indefinitely postponed. For impeachment to be upheld, at least six out of eight Constitutional Court justices (i.e., a two-thirds majority) must vote in favor. However, it appeared that three conservative justices were avoiding to decide their positions due to pressure from far-right forces. The scenario in which the impeachment is rejected, Yoon returns to power, and he imposes stricter emergency measures with the support of far-right forces was no longer unthinkable. From the outset of the impeachment motion against Yoon, the March to Socialism (MtS) has argued for overthrowing the Yoon administration through the power of mass struggle. The core method was to combine a powerful general strike led by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) with explosive street protests. However, the MtS's call for a powerful general strike was ignored within the KCTU until early March. Yet, by mid-March, the situation suddenly changed. This was because the Constitutional Court's ruling was repeatedly postponed, leading optimism to turn into pessimism. As the atmosphere quickly spread that the outcome of the Constitutional Court's ruling could not be guaranteed, the KCTU leadership was forced to declare a general strike, albeit belatedly. However, the general strike carried out by the KCTU on March 27 was very weak due to inadequate preparation. Nevertheless, there was no other option. The KCTU decided to organize a stronger general strike on April 10 and developed preparations. In this atmosphere, the scale of workers' and people's rallies in late March once again surpassed those of far-right forces. In these circumstances, the Constitutional Court announced on April 1 that it would issue its ruling on April 4. The KCTU held a Representative Conference on April 3 and unanimously resolved to launch a full-scale general strike if the Constitutional Court rejected the impeachment. If the Constitutional Court had rejected the impeachment, there would have been a real possibility of a militant general strike involving hundreds of thousands of participants. On April 4, the Constitutional Court unanimously decided to remove Yoon from office. It looked obvious that the mass struggle of workers and people forced the Constitutional Court to make this unanimous decision. The presidential election held on June 3 ended as expected with the victory of Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party, who secured 49.4% of the vote. This brought the severe political crisis that began on December 3 with Yoon's declaration of martial law to a close. However, this is merely the starting point for an even greater political crisis. The emergence of Yoon's People Power Party regime three years ago was due to the disappointment and disillusionment of workers and people with the previous Moon Jae-in Democratic Party regime. The Moon regime claimed to be the successor to the candlelight protests that impeached the Park regime. However, under the Moon administration, which had promised a significant increase in the minimum wage, the minimum wage ended up in disarray due to the second-lowest increase rate in history and institutional reforms that worsened the system. Despite pledges to regularize irregular workers in the public sector, the majority were converted into regular employees of subsidiaries with little change in wages or working conditions. Despite boasting about curbing skyrocketing real estate prices, the administration's double-standard approach of avoiding effective regulations led to explosive increases in housing prices. While proclaiming fairness and justice, it shielded high-ranking public official involved in his children’s college admissions scandals. Despite claiming to be a feminist government, it shielded major figures involved in sexual violence and avoided amending the law to legalize abortion following the ruling that the abortion ban was unconstitutional. In this presidential election, Lee Jae-myung defined the Democratic Party as a center-right party and recruited a large number of right-wing politicians, further clarifying his class character. Lee Jae-myung, who advocates pro-business policies, has promised drastic deregulation and corporate tax cuts. He has pledged to push for the Semiconductor Special Act, which will inject massive state funds to support semiconductor conglomerates. He has proposed doubling the stock market as a solution to the housing price surge. Although he emphasized his background as a child laborer, he barely mentioned worker-related issues such as the minimum wage and irregular employment during the presidential campaign. He rejected the enactment of an anti-discrimination law prohibiting discrimination based on gender, race, nationality, and disability, saying it was “something to be done later.” Despite the Democratic Party clearly revealing its nature as a capitalist party, the Progressive Party, one of the reformist progressive parties, supported Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party in this presidential election. The Progressive Party also formed an electoral alliance with the Democratic Party in the April 2024 general election. The Progressive Party, which has a pro-North Korea stance, is repeating the popular front strategy adopted by Stalinism in the 1930s in the face of the rise of fascism, in today's South Korea, which is facing the rise of far-right forces. Several labor unions led by the Progressive Party within the KCTU declared their support for Lee Jae-myung. The current KCTU leadership, which leans toward the Progressive Party, attempted to endorse Lee Jae-myung at the KCTU level but abandoned it after fierce debate. Ultimately, the KCTU did not endorse any candidate in this presidential election. Other reformist progressive parties, such as the Justice Party, the Labor Party, and the Green Party, formed an electoral alliance called the “Social Transformation Alliance” with some labor and social groups and nominated their own presidential candidate under the name Democratic Labor Party. Their candidate, Kwon Young-gook, was a lawyer who had long fought alongside workers. At the center of this movement was the Justice Party. Pursuing social democracy, the Justice Party had emerged as the leading progressive party, securing 6.2% of the vote in the 2017 presidential election. The Justice Party's strategy was to maintain good relations with the Democratic Party while attracting progressive voters who supported the Democratic Party, thereby growing its base. However, this strategy collapsed after two major incidents. First, during the 2019 scandal involving the college admissions scandal of the children of the Justice Minister under the Moon administration, the Justice Party sided with the Democratic Party. This incident caused the Justice Party to lose significant support from its core base of young voters. Second, in the 2022 presidential election, the Justice Party secured 2.4% of the vote, a margin larger than the 0.7% difference between Yoon and Lee Jae-myung. This led Democratic Party supporters to declare that they would never vote for the Justice Party again, claiming it had enabled Yoon's victory. Facing a crisis, the Justice Party was engulfed in severe chaos and division ahead of the 2024 general election and ultimately lost all six of its seats. Following last year's general election, the Justice Party shifted its political direction to the left in an effort to address the crisis. In this presidential election, the Justice Party formed an electoral alliance with other groups that more clearly advocate for the independent political empowerment of the working class. The Democratic Labor Party candidate Kwon Young-gook, a member of the Justice Party, made clear statements on issues such as expanding workers' and people's rights and enacting an anti-discrimination law. Additionally, he demonstrated his commitment to solidarity with the working class by visiting workers engaged in high-altitude sit-in protests and the families of victims of workplace accidents. Therefore, the MtS called for votes for Kwon Young-gook, under the conditions it could not field a revolutionary socialist candidate. This was because it believed that the independent political empowerment of the working class against all capitalist parties including the Democratic Party is the most important task at this juncture. The 1.0% of the vote Kwon Young-gook received will serve as a very valuable starting point for building an independent political force of the working class. However, the MtS did not give unconditional support to Kwon Young-gook but rather offered critical support. First, the platform of Kwon Young-gook remained confined to reforms within capitalism, and even those were timid. Kwon Young-gook avoided direct struggle against capitalism itself and only demanded expanded distribution through tax increases and institutional reforms. It completely excluded struggles for the nationalization of key industries and conglomerates, the deprivation of capitalists' management rights, and workers' and people's control over industries. Although the party put forward a “universal job guarantee system,” its proposal merely called for expanding public works on the periphery while leaving the capitalist mode of production and big capital intact. The defense and foreign policy pledge to “develop Arctic shipping route” revealed an anti-ecological mindset that seeks to exploit the climate crisis for profit accumulation, as well as a lack of geopolitical awareness that the Arctic shipping route is emerging as a core arena of confrontation among the US, China, and Russia. The second reason for the MtS's critical support for Kwon Young-gook was that the Democratic Labor Party included a significant number of individuals who had previously sought alliance with the Democratic Party. Although the People Power Party lost power in this presidential election, its candidate Kim Moon-soo's 41.2% of the vote demonstrated that it remains a powerful force. In addition, Lee Jun-seok, a candidate for the Reform Party, won 8.3% of the vote. This means that two candidates with far-right tendencies received support from nearly half of the voters. Of course, it would be inaccurate to label all voters who supported these two candidates as far-right. Many voters likely cast their ballots for far-right candidates due to their rejection of the Democratic Party and Lee Jae-myung, as well as the weakness of working-class political forces. However, it appears that approximately half of the voters who supported these two candidates—or one-quarter of the total population—can be considered a solid far-right bloc. Kim Moon-soo, in his mid-70s, represents Korea's traditional far right, rooted in anti-communism and anti-North Korea sentiment. This group, which has succeeded through pro-Japanese forces during the Japanese occupation, pro-US forces during the US military government, and ardent supporters of the military regime that led industrialization, now has its core support base among the elderly over 60 and Christian fundamentalists. Lee Jun-seok, 40, symbolizes the emerging far-right, rooted in hatred toward women and social minorities. This can be seen as the Korean version of a global phenomenon, where a backlash against the feminist movement that swept the world in the 2010s has spread among young men. His core support base is also men in their 20s and 30s, who just eight years ago overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party candidate. There are tensions and differences between the two far-right forces. Unlike the faction represented by Kim Moon-soo, which opposed the impeachment of Yoon, the faction represented by Lee Jun-seok supported it. However, the two factions share an extreme right-wing worldview in many more ways. Opposition to anti-discrimination law and hatred of China are the core issues that bind the two factions together. Yoon's December 3 martial law was an attempt by the far-right, which had grown powerful enough to seize control of the highest authority in South Korea, a country with a history of military dictatorship, to hastily evolve into military fascism. Their attempt failed, and the path to military fascism has been blocked for now. However, the capitalist crisis that initially fueled the rise of the far-right remains unchanged. The far-right, whose essence lies in defending the capitalist system, paradoxically emerges where hope for a better life through sustained capitalist growth has vanished. Characterized by hatred, discrimination, and exclusion of workers and oppressed people, the far-right grows by attacking the hypocrisy and incompetence of bourgeois democracy, which once promised freedom and equality. When workers and people drift between bourgeois parties without a genuine alternative in the form of revolutionary workers' politics and mass struggle, far-right forces gain the opportunity to establish themselves as an alternative to bourgeois democracy. Today's global capitalist crisis is bringing even South Korean capitalism, which has been known for its dynamic development over the past few decades, to a standstill. The Lee Jae-myung administration's grandiose promises to resolve the suffering of workers and people through growth will soon lead to disastrous results. Regardless of the growth rate figures, big capital will reap huge benefits while workers and people will suffer bitterly. Disappointment and disillusionment with the Democratic Party administration will once again sweep through workers and people. At that moment, who will lead the workers and people to confront the Democratic Party regime will determine the future. If the initiative once again falls into the hands of the far-right forces, the past will repeat itself in an even worse form. However, if the working class seizes the initiative, a hopeful future different from the past will finally begin. The independent political empowerment of the working class, the strengthening of resolute mass struggles of workers and the oppressed, and the spread of revolutionary politics that directly challenge capitalism are the key factors for opening such a future, and therefore, are written in the banner that the MtS is raising.

2025-06-23 | 조회 445

The Nature of Yoon’s December 3 Self-Coup On December 3, at 10:23 p.m., Yoon Suk-yeol, the president of South Korea, unexpectedly declared emergency martial law, vowing to “crush anti-state forces.” An hour later, the martial law commander issued Decree No. 1. But at 1:01 a.m., the National Assembly passed a bill calling for the lifting of martial law. According to the Constitution of South Korea, the National Assembly can call for the lifting of martial law. If it does, the president must immediately comply. On December 3, Yoon violated the Constitution by sending police and troops to prevent the National Assembly from convening, but this failed.At 4:27 a.m., Yoon declared the martial law lifted. This was six hours after Yoon’s declaration. The Crushing of Bourgeois Democracy Yoon pointed to the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) as the core of the anti-state forces in his December 3 speech, as well as in his December 12 speech, which called on the Far Right to rise up. He also cited the investigation of election fraud as the main reason for declaring martial law. On the night of December 3, 38 agents from the Intelligence Command, including the High Intelligence Division (HID), were on standby to arrest 30 National Election Commission (NEC) employees who were going to work the next day and take them to Bunker B1. The arrest list, presented by the Counter-intelligence Commander to the National Intelligence Service’s first deputy director and the national police chief, included people who had been identified by conspiracy theorists as key players in the election fraud. It seems that Yoon had a plan to torture NEC officials and arrest people to fabricate evidence of election fraud and then annul the April general election and dissolve the National Assembly, thereby wiping out the DPK. The fact that DPK figures, including Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the party, dominate the arrest list also indicates that the DPK was the primary target. Yet the arrest list also included Han Dong-hoon, the leader of the ruling People Power Party (PPP). This shows that Yoon’s intention was to eliminate all political opposition, regardless of party affiliation. Han Dong-hoon revealed that shortly after martial law was declared, someone called him, saying, “If you go to the National Assembly, you will be arrested and your life may be in danger.” The inclusion of the speaker and vice speaker of the National Assembly, some former and current Supreme Court justices, and the judge who recently acquitted Lee Jae-myung on the arrest list shows a blatant intention to completely neutralize the legislature and intimidate the judiciary. The decree issued shortly after Yoon’s declaration stated that the government would deprive South Korean citizens of their fundamental rights through a wide range of measures. These included banning the activities of the National Assembly, local councils, and political parties; banning all political activities, such as associations, meetings, and demonstrations; placing the press and publications under the control of the martial law command; banning strikes, lockouts, and assemblies; and authorizing arrests, detentions, and searches without warrants. It also authorizes the suppression of all criticism and resistance. It prohibits anyone from questioning the liberal democratic system or calling for its overthrow, and it prohibits what the government defines as fake news, the manipulation of public opinion, and false propaganda. It calls for the punishment of those who violate the decree, who are understood as subversive, anti-state forces. Suppressing the Basic Rights of the Workers and People If Yoon’s self-coup had succeeded, the workers and people would have suffered the most. The arrest list included Yang Kyung-soo, the president of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). The decree sought to sweep away the rights of the workers and people, especially by crushing their freedom of strike, assembly, speech, and political activity. If Yoon’s self-coup had succeeded, strikes and democratic unions would have become impossible. There would be no democratic trade unions, no left political organizations, no progressive parties, no labor organizations, and no civil society organizations. Naturally, the capitalists would then set out to strip the working class of all the gains it has made since the great strike wave of 1987. An Attempt to Revive Military Fascism On the afternoon of December 3, Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun made a remark over lunch that he would “crush the National Assembly with tanks.” The commander of the 2nd Armored Brigade, which commands the tank unit closest to Seoul, was on standby at the Intelligence Command, where agents were waiting to attack the NEC on the night of December 3. If Yoon had gone ahead with his self-coup, tanks would have rumbled through the center of Seoul. Yoon’s December 3 coup attempted to replicate Park Chung-hee’s coups of May 16, 1961, and October 17, 1972, and Chun Doo-hwan’s coups of December 12, 1979, and May 17, 1980. If Yoon had succeeded, it would have been a full-scale revival of the military fascism of 1961–87. The military regime that ruled South Korea from 1961 to 1987 was (arguably, depending on how you define fascism) a form of fascism, that is, military fascism, in that it not only smashed bourgeois democracy but also stripped the working class of all its rights, including the right to organize and strike. (Here, there is an important difference between the classical fascism that emerged in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and the military fascism that existed in South Korea from 1961 to 1987. Classical fascism in Italy and Germany emerged as a means to subdue the working class when it was on the verge of revolution. Military fascism in South Korea, however, emerged as a means to maximize the oppression and exploitation of the working class while its capacity was still very weak.) Yoon’s December 3 martial law closely resembles the 10-17 martial law imposed by Park Chung-hee in 1972 to establish the Yushin system, or the 5-17 martial law extension that crushed the Seoul Spring and the Gwangju People’s Uprising imposed by Chun Doo-hwan in 1980 to reestablish a military-fascist regime. In conclusion, Yoon’s December 3 martial law was a self-coup aimed at reviving military fascism by depriving the workers and people of all the rights they had won with their own blood. It was also an “insurrection” against the people that sought to overthrow the country’s constitutional system based on the limited democratization of 1987 through anti-democratic conspiracy and force. Why Yoon’s December 3 Self-Coup Occurred Yoon’s Political Crisis When Yoon won the March 2022 presidential election by a narrow margin of 0.73 percent and took office in May, the DPK and other opposition parties controlled 63 percent of the National Assembly (189 seats). In the April 2024 general election, held two years after his inauguration, the opposition swept to control 64 percent of the National Assembly (192 seats). Yoon lost the April general election largely because of his reactionary policies. Yoon launched a vicious crackdown on the freight and construction unions. He tried to introduce a 69-hour workweek, but was stopped by a strong public backlash. He continued to push for policies against gender equality, including the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, claiming that “there is no longer structural gender discrimination.” He supported Japan’s dumping of contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, neutralized the Supreme Court ruling that Japanese companies had to pay compensation for forced labor, and escalated the war crisis by strengthening the U.S.-Japan–South Korea alliance and expanding joint war drills. In the name of fairness and common sense, he has steadfastly refused to investigate the allegations against him and his wife. After his crushing defeat in the April general election, Yoon had to endure a minority position in the National Assembly from his inauguration in May 2023 to December 3, 2025, leading to a two-year, seven-month period of unprecedented fragile governance in South Korean politics. During this time, Yoon vetoed 25 bills initiated by the DPK, including the special prosecutor bills. The prosecution, acting as Yoon’s henchman, conducted a sweeping investigation of Lee Jae-myung, including 376 raids, and referred him to five criminal trials, while thoroughly avoiding investigating the allegations against Yoon and his wife, Kim Gun-hee. Yoon’s vetoes included several bills for special prosecutors to investigate his and Kim’s allegations. The DPK, on the other hand, has suspended government officials from office through 22 impeachment cases. The DPK’s impeachment targets included prosecutors who avoided investigating Yoon and Kim Gun-hee, and prosecutors in charge of the Lee Jae-myung investigation. This process was one of the countless struggles in the bourgeois political system in which bourgeois political forces expose each other’s corruption and mobilize the judicial system to seize power. In this struggle, the situation became increasingly unfavorable for Yoon. This was largely due to his conflict with Han Dong-hoon. Han was Yoon’s closest confidant, but after entering politics with the dream of becoming the next president, he attempted to differentiate himself from Yoon over the solution to the Kim Gun-hee allegations. The relationship between Yoon and Han continued to deteriorate, and it became increasingly likely that Han’s faction in the PPP would vote for the Kim Gun-hee special prosecutor bill, pushing it over the two-thirds threshold and neutralizing Yoon’s veto power as president. Another variable was the revelation of Myung Tae-gyun, a political broker who was deeply involved in Yoon’s presidential campaign. On October 31, a recording was released that indicated Yoon’s illegal interference in the process of designating the PPP candidate in a by-election. On December 2, Myung Tae-gyun, who was detained, said he could provide his cell phone to the DPK, putting pressure on Yoon and Kim Gun-hee. These factors show how Yoon’s political crisis deepened in the days leading up to December 3, the day martial law was declared. But Yoon’s political crisis cannot be directly linked to the declaration of martial law, which has not taken place in the past 44 years. Many connections can be made between the two. Yoon’s personality and temperament are important factors. But more important are the social and political changes that influenced Yoon and made it possible for him to choose martial law as a way out of his crisis. The Regrowth of Far-Right Forces on the Remnants of Fascism The workers’ and people’s struggle for democracy, which began with the Gwangju People’s Uprising in 1980 and culminated in the June 1987 Uprising, was stopped with only a half victory by the betrayal of the liberal bourgeois forces that were in league with the military regime. Democracy was won only in a shell, and military fascism was never completely liquidated. The far-right forces, which were the mainstay of the pro-Japanese forces during the Japanese occupation and supported Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan during the military regimes, remained strongly entrenched in the state apparatus, including the military, police, administration, and judiciary, even after the formal democratization of 1987. Remnants of fascism seeped into the limited bourgeois democracy of the “1987 system” and persisted. In 1990, the Democratic Liberty Party (the origin of today’s PPP) was formed through a coalition of Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo’s Democratic Justice Party, Kim Jong-pil’s New Democratic Republican Party (the remnants of the Park Chung-hee regime), and Kim Young-sam’s Unification Democratic Party, that is, a combination of the leaders of the military regimes and the moderate faction of the liberal bourgeois forces. Initially, descendants of the military regime were the mainstay of the Democratic Liberty Party, but after the Hanahoe faction within the military was purged by the Kim Young-sam regime in 1993, and Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo were punished for treason for their 1979 and 1980 coups in 1995, the leadership of the party shifted to the republican conservative faction, which represented the liberal bourgeois forces. The remnants of the military regime, which had lost its leadership and seen its core disintegrate, turned to the republican conservatives for political survival. Around the 1997 IMF crisis, the radical faction of the liberal bourgeois forces led by Kim Dae-jung redefined itself as the neoliberal center-right, while the republican conservative faction (including remnants of the military regime) redefined itself as the neoliberal right. From the Kim Dae-jung government in 1998 to the Yoon government in 2024, the two forces dominated South Korean politics. They had similar characteristics, not only in their fundamental nature as capitalist parties but also in their core policies of implementing neoliberal offensives. But the two forces were not entirely the same. Each time the neoliberal right came to power, it revealed its inherent far-right nature and repeatedly launched harsher attacks on the workers and people. Typical examples include the murderous suppression of the Ssangyong Motors strike in 2009, the harsh attacks on democratic unions in the metal industry in 2010–12, the control of KBS and MBC broadcasting that continued throughout the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye regimes, the blacklisting of cultural figures during the Park Geun-hye administration, the labor reform offensive during the Park Geun-hye administration in 2015–16, and the ruthless repression of the freight and construction unions during the Yoon administration in 2022–24. The state’s far-right attacks have provoked strong counterattacks of the workers and people. The explosion of the campaign to oust Park Geun-hye in 2016–17, which eventually led to her impeachment, resulted from the accumulation and mobilization of counterattacks of the workers and people against the far-right attacks of the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye regimes. Park’s impeachment, however, sparked a backlash that saw a renewed growth of the Far Right. By the time Park’s impeachment was finalized by the Constitutional Court in March 2017, the so-called Taegeukgi rallies organized by the Far Right had taken over the streets. The voices of the Far Right, which for two decades after 1997 had maintained a veneer of right-wing neoliberalism, began to echo loudly in the streets, including open calls for a military coup. The regrowth of the Far Right was led by the Christian evangelical Right, represented by Pastor Jeon Kwang-hoon, and joined by descendants of the military regime, including retired military generals. The momentum of the Far Right continued throughout the Moon administration, with far-right YouTubers and election fraud conspiracy theories playing a central role in maintaining and expanding its popular base. The Far Right attempted to establish itself as an independent political force in the 2020 general elections, but it failed to produce a single member of the National Assembly. It had considerable success, however, in strengthening its influence within the PPP through its recruitment tactics. For a time, the growing influence of the Far Right in the PPP paralleled the growing influence of the republican conservative faction. Yoon, who gripped the prosecution, the core bureaucracy, emerged as the centerpiece of the Far Right when he was recruited as the PPP’s presidential candidate, but he organized his presidential campaign under the guise of a republican conservative. Yoon revealed the true nature of the Far Right when he ousted the young leader of the PPP and seized control of the party shortly after taking power, and the leadership of the PPP clearly shifted to the Far Right around Yoon. Since then, Yoon has continued his illegal and anti-republican interference in party affairs, including blatantly interfering in the PPP presidential election and forcing the party’s presidents to resign. But in the name of the pro-Yoon faction, many PPP politicians blindly supported Yoon and lined up behind him. In 2023–24, while Yoon repeatedly shouted “crush the anti-state forces” in public and became an increasingly outspoken voice of the Far Right, the pro-Yoon faction also increasingly moved toward shedding the veneer of republican conservatism and exposing the true nature of the Far Right. Thus, Yoon’s December 3 self-coup reflected the social and political changes that had been taking place since 2017, in which the Far Right was growing again on the remnants of military fascism. It can also be seen as having fully realized the latent aspirations of the Far Right to revive military fascism under such conditions. Relevance to the Rise of the Global Far Right How does Yoon’s December 3 self-coup, and the resurgence of the Far Right since 2017 as its social underpinning, relate to the global trend of the rising Far Right in the United States and elsewhere over the past decade? The first thing to note is that in South Korea, as in the United States, Christian fundamentalism, or the evangelical Right, has played a leading role in the recent growth of the Far Right. The evangelical Right in South Korea has waved Israeli flags alongside the American flag at rallies and fought fiercely against anti-discrimination laws, just as the evangelical Right in the U.S. has been a strong Zionist and anti-LGBTQ+ force. The fact that election fraud conspiracy theories have become an important part of the logic of the Far Right is also consistent with what we have seen in the United States and Brazil. Yoon’s December 3 self-coup, which cited “exposing the truth about election fraud” as one of its causes, was similar in this respect to the 2021 U.S. Capitol Hill riots and the 2023 riots at the Brazilian Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace. But there are also important differences. The rise of the global Far Right has paradoxically been fueled in large part by the economic impoverishment of the workers and people in the wake of the deepening capitalist crisis, and it has gained a fairly broad social base in many countries, as Trump’s reelection shows. And while the coming to power of the Far Right represents an extreme socioeconomic attack on the workers and people, it does not easily develop into fascism, or a total rejection of bourgeois democracy. In contrast, the rise of the Far Right in South Korea is still dominated by elements of political consciousness linked to the remnants of fascism, and its social base is heavily weighted toward the over-60s who are nostalgic for the military fascism of the past. The history and remnants of military fascism in South Korea also make it possible for the Far Right to quickly develop attempts to revive fascism, such as the December 3 self-coup, without intermediate steps. Why Yoon’s December 3 Self-Coup Failed Poor Preparation and Lack of Self-Justification Why did Yoon’s December 3 self-coup fail? The primary reason is that the military and police were outpaced by the speed with which thousands of workers, people, and lawmakers rushed to the National Assembly to lift martial law immediately after it was declared. But if the mobilized military and police had wanted to paralyze the National Assembly through ruthless violence, it was not physically impossible. In fact, Yoon ordered the special warfare commander to “break down the door and take out the people inside,” the capital defense commander to “go in and drag them out one by one,” and the police chief to arrest lawmakers six times. The military commanders and the police chief basically carried out Yoon’s orders to blockade the National Assembly, yet they did not carry out orders that would have caused bloodshed. They were not consciously prepared to risk the bloodshed and the subsequent liability. Another important reason why the military commanders and the police chief were unwilling to risk bloodshed was that they could not rule out the possibility that frontline soldiers and police officers would mutiny in the event of bloodshed. In this regard, Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, who was the overall planner of the December 3 martial law, responded to a DPK lawmaker who raised suspicions of martial law preparations during a parliamentary personnel hearing on September 2. “In the current situation in South Korea, if martial law is imposed, will any people tolerate it? Would our military follow? I don’t think so,” he replied. His answer was a lie to conceal the fact that he was preparing for martial law, but it backfired badly by suggesting that elements of the military would disobey and refuse to implement martial law. These facts show that Yoon’s December 3 self-coup was so poorly prepared that even its key organizers were unsure of its legitimacy. Despite discussing and preparing for the coup for more than a year, they were unable to come up with a plausible cause beyond Yoon’s overcoming a personal crisis or conspiracy theories about election fraud. The growth of the Far Right had reached the point where it had taken over the highest office in the country, the presidency, and dozens of National Assembly members of the ruling party, and the history and legacy of military fascism led to a rapid attempt to revive fascism, but the lack of competence and impulsiveness of the self-coup leaders led to a haphazardly prepared and executed coup that failed. The Historical Power of the Gwangju People’s Uprising But what would have happened if Yoon’s December 3 self-coup had succeeded in any way? One thing can be said for sure. The uprising of the workers and people, similar to the one in Gwangju in May 1980, would have taken place, this time in Seoul and other parts of the country. We don’t know if it would have succeeded. But even if it had been crushed once again by the violence of the military, the blood of the massacred victims would have ushered in a new revolutionary era against the tyranny of military fascism, just as the revolutionary defeat of Kwangju in May 1980 ushered in the revolutionary era of the 1980s in South Korea. The process by which the defeat of the Gwangju People’s Uprising in May 1980 was revived and carried forward in the June 1987 Uprising and the July-September Workers’ Great Struggle would have been repeated. In the process, however, the struggles of the workers and people would have likely been much more explosive and massive than they were in the 1980s. In Gwangju in 1980, nameless workers took the lead in the uprising, but they had no organizational weapons. In the run-up to 1987, the working class also lacked organizational weapons and thus could not play an independent role. Now, however, 1.1 million workers are organized in the KCTU, centered in the key sectors of South Korean capitalism. Although it has suffered severe bureaucratic setbacks, the potential of the democratic trade union movement is still alive. In the workers’ struggle against the self-coup, or in their struggle to overcome defeat, the strength of the workers now organized in the KCTU would have played a huge role. Therefore, even if Yoon’s December 3 self-coup had succeeded, military fascism would not have lasted long. A huge revolutionary wave would have swept through South Korea, far surpassing that of the 1980s, and the working class would have advanced much further than it did in the 1980s. But this is precisely what the military commanders and the police chief who were mobilized to blockade the National Assembly must have instinctively felt: that even if they succeeded, they could not last long. No South Korean can ignore the dramatic resurgence and triumph of the 1980 Gwangju People’s Uprising in history, albeit with limited democratization. That must have been the real fear that made the military commanders and the police chief hesitate. Without that fear, it would have been much easier to risk bloodshed for a flimsy cause. But if the self-coup could not last long even if it succeeded, the cause would have to be much clearer to risk bloodshed. Failure to Provoke a Local War The plotters of the December 3 coup tried to create their own rationale. The idea was to provoke North Korea into a local war. On October 11, North Korea announced that South Korea had flown drones over Pyongyang on three separate occasions on October 3, 9, and 10, dropping leaflets into North Korea. In the aftermath of the failed December 3 coup, it became clear that the drone infiltration was an intentional provocation by the Yoon regime to provoke a local war and secure the rationale for martial law. On November 18, the defense minister ordered an attack on some points in North Korea from which the garbage balloons were launched, but he was reportedly blocked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the notebooks of Roh Sang-won, the man who worked on the December 3 coup, a memo was found that read, “to induce North Korea to attack the Northern Limit Line” in the sea. Why did the Yoon regime’s attempt to provoke a local war fail? North Korea’s October 31 launch of the Hwasong-19 intercontinental ballistic missile sums up why. North Korea, emboldened by its military ties with Russia and the functioning of the China-Russia–North Korea alliance, did not rush into a local war but rather boldly sent a message to the United States (not the Yoon regime) that “if you want war, let’s have an all-out war.” In fact, in the current international situation, if war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, it is very likely that it will not be limited to a local war. In recent years, the imperialist hegemonic confrontation between the United States and China has intensified significantly, with wars continuing in Ukraine and the Middle East. In this context, the Korean Peninsula, along with Taiwan, has been considered the most likely place for a third war. Like Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula involves direct U.S. and Chinese interests, but unlike Taiwan, the international confrontation between the U.S.-Japan–South Korea and China-Russia–North Korea is already in full swing, and a vast array of powerful weapons have been pointed at each other for decades. If a war were to break out on the Korean Peninsula, it could easily escalate into an international war of mass destruction involving the U.S.-Japan and China-Russia, and possibly even World War III. The exact course of events remains to be seen, but the risk of uncontrollability that war on the Korean Peninsula carries is likely why Yoon’s attempt to provoke a local war failed. The United States could not afford to be drawn into a war on the Korean Peninsula that it was unprepared for during a regime change. On the one hand, the Yoon regime’s attempt to provoke a local war shows how poorly it understands international affairs, but on the other hand, it also reminds us of how dangerous a world we live in. It’s hard not to shudder at how close we are not only to fascism but also to war. Yoon’s December 3 self-coup shows once again that we are living in an era of crisis, war, and revolution, an era in which the extreme crisis of capitalism calls for fascism and war, and therefore the workers and people have no choice but to rise up in revolution if they want to survive. The Nature and Prospects of the New Class Struggle Terrain A Front against the Far Right Yoon’s December 3 self-coup radically changed the terrain of class struggle in South Korea overnight. The Far Right attempted to revive military fascism, which would wipe out bourgeois democracy and strip the workers and people of all their rights. On this new terrain, the working class is forced to fight on the same side with the DPK and other bourgeois democratic forces to confront the Far Right. The current situation is similar to that of the Kornilov coup in Russia in late August 1917, when the working class was forced to fight on the same side with the bourgeois Provisional Government. It is also the same terrain as that of the 1980s, when the working class and the liberal bourgeois forces were on the same side against the military regime. Yet the previous terrain of class struggle was different. The workers and people fought against two capitalist forces: the neoliberal right (PPP) and the neoliberal center-right (DPK). There were some differences between the two, but they were not decisive for the workers and people. In the previous terrain of class struggle, it was necessary to develop the struggle of the workers and people against both capitalist forces while firmly adhering to the independence of the working class. This previous terrain of class struggle was formed with the limited democratization in 1987. It was stabilized in the mid- to late 1990s, when the remnants of the military regime were transformed into republican conservatives and the bourgeois political order was reorganized into a configuration of neoliberal right versus neoliberal center-right. The previous terrain of class struggle, which had lasted for about 30 years, was transformed into a new one with the December 3 self-coup. Even in the new terrain, the most important starting point is to develop the independence and fighting power of the working class. Of course, the struggle against not only the Far Right but also the bourgeois democratic forces such as the DPK must continue. But the characteristic of the new terrain is that the struggle against the Far Right is a key task. The more the working class can surpass the DPK and seize the initiative in the struggle against the Far Right, the more it can gain hegemony among the broad masses, and the more successfully it can develop the struggle of the workers and people against the DPK. In Russia in late August 1917, the Bolshevik-led soviets played a decisive role in neutralizing the Kornilov coup. This achievement maximized the confidence of the workers and people, who rallied to the soviets and ultimately led to the October Revolution two months later, when the soviets easily defeated the fragile bourgeois Provisional Government and established a socialist republic. The same principle is now at work on the front against the Far Right. The Goals and Methods of the Far Right Yoon’s December 3 self-coup provocatively opened a new front, but its immediate failure left the Far Right in a very unfavorable position. Yet the Far Right, which has a significant political and social base, is mounting a formidable resistance and counterattack. At first, Yoon and other far-right forces tried to compromise with Han Dong-hoon to avoid impeachment and buy time to rearm. But when Han demanded that Yoon surrender and “retire early within three to four months,” they broke off the compromise and moved toward a head-on confrontation. Yoon vowed to “fight to the end” in a December 12 speech, and on December 14, the PPP’s 85 members of the National Assembly voted against the impeachment motion. Those who oppose Yoon’s impeachment or believe that the December 3 martial law was not a treason have remained at 20 to 25 percent in public opinion polls. Jeon Kwang-hoon and others launched a frenzied campaign to organize a far-right uprising in the streets. Even now that the impeachment motion has passed, Yoon and the Far Right are looking for a chance to reverse the balance of power by holding out. Yoon has refused any investigation of treason while seeking to delay the impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court as long as possible. The PPP boycotted the process of appointing additional judges to the Constitutional Court and reorganized its leadership in Yoon’s favor, ousting Han Dong-hoon. Acting President Han Deok-soo blatantly sabotaged the impeachment trial and treason investigation by refusing to appoint additional constitutional judges and to recommend a permanent special prosecutor for the treason case. In the current situation, the core goal of the far-right forces, including the PPP, is to prevent Yoon’s final removal from office and punishment for treason by any means. Their logic can be summed up as “the December 3 martial law was not an act of treason because it was an act of presidential rule.” They are essentially defending the December 3 martial law, which was an attempt to revive military fascism, and trying to defeat the severe punishment. This is partly because they fear the repercussions for themselves if Yoon’s dismissal and treason charges are confirmed, but it is also because the Far Right intends to legitimize its attempt to revive military fascism, leaving the way open for another try in the future. The Goals and Methods of the DPK In the current situation, the core goal of the DPK is to reestablish a DPK regime. On the one hand, the DPK is sincere in its desire to remove Yoon and punish him for treason, because the DPK’s leaders would have suffered terrible personal hardship and the destruction of bourgeois democracy if the December 3 self-coup had succeeded. But for the DPK, this is not a means to fully advance democracy and win broader rights for the workers and people, but only a means to return to power. A DPK regime, as an enforcer of neoliberal policies, would continue to attack the workers and people. Obviously, the reestablishment of a DPK regime is a goal that the workers and people cannot share. In fact, it was none other than Moon Jae-in’s DPK regime that created the Yoon PPP regime. The Moon administration took the opposite path from the aspirations of the workers and people, as expressed in the 2016–17 candlelight protests: it crushed the minimum wage, allowed housing prices to skyrocket, and covered up the corruption of the privileged class. It was the Moon Jae-in administration that started the Yoon administration’s ferocious crackdown on the construction union. Yoon was able to come to power only on the back of widespread disappointment and disillusionment with the Moon administration. What created the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye regimes were also the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun regimes of the DPK. The neoliberal offensive waged by the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun regimes for a decade, starting in 1998, led to the shock of mass layoffs and the rapid spread of irregular workers. Having tasted the sweetness of power, the DPK became part of the mainstream of the reactionary ruling forces. The widespread disappointment and disillusionment of the workers and people with the decade of the DPK regimes made it possible for the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye regimes to come to power and remain there. The DPK’s preoccupation with returning to power even in such a tense situation was evident in its attempt to act like a ruling party by proposing a national stability council to acting President Han Deok-soo immediately after the impeachment motion against Yoon was passed. This was the result of a shallow calculation that providing stability would be the way to win the votes of the center in the upcoming presidential election. This, however, turned out to be a big mistake that only gave Yoon, Han, and the PPP the time and pretext to retool. The DPK wants its parliamentary power, with 170 seats (56.7 percent) in the National Assembly, to be seen as decisive. It wants the mass rallies to work only as a tool to legitimize the exercise of its parliamentary power, and only within the political limits it has drawn. If the DPK’s intentions are realized, the struggle against the Far Right will be decisively weakened. The power to defeat the Far Right, which dreams of overthrowing bourgeois democracy itself, does not come from a parliamentary majority. Only when the working class takes the lead in the people’s uprising, mobilizing the unique means of the general strike, will it be able to completely defeat the Far Right. The Goals and Methods of the Working Class In the current situation, the key objective of the working class is to remove Yoon from the presidency, to have him arrested and punished for treason in the most decisive and thorough way, and to dismantle or deal a devastating blow to the PPP, which has become a nexus of the Far Right and which shamelessly defends Yoon’s attempt to revive fascism. In this way, we must destroy the attempt to revive military fascism so that it cannot be attempted again in South Korean society. In addition, by shifting the political landscape of South Korea significantly to the left, we must pave the way for broad gains in the rights of the workers and people and a dramatic advance in the workers’ movement and workers’ politics. At the same time, the working class must fight for the broad demands of the workers and people in the open spaces that have opened up since the defeat of the December 3 self-coup. Even before the December 3 martial law, the working class has been essentially deprived of basic rights. The lives of the workers and people have already been severely violated by the overexploitation of irregular workers and the denial of basic labor rights, the oppression and discrimination of women and LGBTQ+ people, the acceleration of the climate crisis and environmental destruction, and the hegemonic confrontation between the imperialist camps and the war crisis. No wonder South Korean society has the highest suicide rate and the lowest fertility rate in the world, and it hasn’t changed much under Yoon’s regime or the previous DPK regimes. The same forces that crushed Yoon’s self-coup must now be mobilized in a massive struggle for the broad rights of the workers and people. The working class must also fight for radical democratic demands related to the recent events. Martial law, thought to have been nullified, was suddenly reinstated and used as a tool to try to revive military fascism. To prevent a recurrence, the martial law system itself must now be removed from the Constitution. It is unreasonable to leave the impeachment of a president to a minority of constitutional judges when there is a 75 percent approval rating for impeachment. We need a referendum to remove the president from office. Eighty-five members of the National Assembly voted against the impeachment, but there is no way to punish them until the next election. Members of the National Assembly can be recalled by the people at any time. Faced with a clearly illegal order to blockade the National Assembly, the military and police hesitated but carried out the order. The military and police should be required to refuse illegal orders. Yoon gained control of the prosecutorial organization, a bureaucratic state apparatus, to become president and used the prosecutorial power at will for his own benefit. The prosecutor’s office should be divided and decentralized to allow for checks and balances, and their leadership should be elected and recallable by the people. Further, the working class must take the lead in an explosive people’s uprising by mobilizing the unique means of a powerful general strike. On the one hand, this is the only way to actually defeat the far-right forces, including Yoon and the PPP, who are intensely resisting. On the other hand, only by actually leading the struggle against the Far Right can the working class gain the hegemony over the 70–75 percent of the broad masses who support impeaching Yoon and punishing him for treason, and gain the power to achieve the demands of the workers and people and a future that guarantees a powerful advance of the workers’ movement. In this regard, it is worth reviewing the experience of the 2016–17 candlelight protests. These were made possible by the KCTU’s struggle against the Park Geun-hye regime’s labor reforms in 2015–16, but the protests failed to organize a general strike that could lead the people’s uprising, ceding the initiative to the DPK, which succeeded in impeaching Park. In the three months between the impeachment motion and the Constitutional Court’s final decision, a wide range of workers’ and popular demands were raised in the open square, but the movement never gained significant popular momentum. This was because the politics of the DPK, the winner of the candlelight protests, dominated and limited the consciousness of the masses in a great way. The same is true now. The more the working class plays a decisive role in the core tasks of the front, namely the struggle to smash the resistance of the Far Right, to remove Yoon from the presidency, to arrest and punish him for treason, and to dismantle and collapse the PPP, the more the working class will have the power to raise and achieve the various demands of the workers and people. Conversely, if the working class again fails to play a meaningful role in the key tasks, and if the bourgeois parliamentary power of the DPK again functions as the decisive solution, the demands of the workers and people that go beyond the politics of the DPK will remain a cold response without popular support. This means that while various efforts must be made to raise the demands of the workers and people, they will be of no great significance if the working class does not play a decisive role in the core tasks. Three Possible Scenarios How will the new terrain of class struggle develop? Broadly speaking, we can think of three scenarios. The first scenario is that Yoon is removed from the presidency, arrested and punished for treason, and the PPP is dismantled. In a word, the Far Right is destroyed, which is the goal the working class must pursue to the best of its ability. This cannot be achieved by centering the DPK’s bourgeois parliamentary power. It can be achieved only if the working class plays a decisive role by leading an explosive people’s uprising with a powerful general strike. If this scenario is realized, it would create huge momentum to push forward the various demands of the workers and people, including radical democratic demands. The workers’ movement and workers’ politics would begin to make a breakthrough. Even the working-class perspective of building a workers’ government and a workers’ world instead of returning the DPK to power would begin to emerge as a meaningful alternative among a significant mass of the population. The second scenario is that Yoon’s removal from the presidency and his punishment for treason fail, and the PPP remains intact. Whether it takes the form of Yoon’s return or something else, the conclusion is the same. This is the worst-case scenario that the working class does not even want to imagine: the realization of the Far Right’s goals. Of course, this is highly unlikely, because 70 percent of the population strongly resents the December 3 self-coup, as reflected in the mass rallies, but we must not forget that the Far Right is desperately resisting and fighting back to prevent its annihilation. To avoid this worst-case scenario, we must continue to develop the struggle of the workers and people to defeat the Far Right not only through public opinion but also through physical force. The third scenario is that Yoon is removed from the presidency and arrested and punished for treason, but the PPP remains intact. While Yoon’s punishment would send a significant warning to far-right attempts to revive fascism, the Far Right would also gain ground by preserving the PPP, which would allow it to fight back in the future. This is the most likely scenario if the current balance of power does not change significantly. If the struggle against the Far Right is centered on the bourgeois parliamentary power of the DPK, in other words, if the working class’s general strike and the people’s uprising are not strong enough, it will come down to this scenario. If we go down this path, further developments could be very dangerous. The DPK could return to power, and the lives of the workers and people would remain essentially unchanged. It would not be long before massive disappointment and disillusionment would reignite among the workers and people. The surviving far-right forces could use this process to reorganize and rejuvenate their ranks and come back stronger than ever. The fact that the global economy and the South Korean economy are sinking deeper into crisis may make the situation much more serious. Until now, the growth of the Far Right in South Korea has been largely concentrated among people over 60 who are nostalgic for the military fascism of the past, but now, as is happening globally, the Far Right may be able to build its forces from a new generation, paradoxically gaining a strong social base from the economic impoverishment of the workers and people. The relationship between the Far Right and the capitalist class may also change. So far, the growth of the Far Right in South Korea has occurred without the support of the capitalist class as a whole, which was one of the reasons why Yoon’s December 3 self-coup failed. But if the economic crisis deepens in the future, the capitalist class as a whole could see it as a solution for the Far Right to take power. If the Far Right were to return to power, it would mean a severe socioeconomic attack on the workers and people, and it could even try once again to revive fascism. As we have seen, the history and remnants of military fascism in South Korea make it easy for the Far Right to develop very quickly into fascism. But even in this scenario, the situation is not necessarily bleak. Even if the DPK returns to power, the course of events could be completely different depending on how successfully the working class develops its independence and militancy. After all, it was the workers’ and people’s disappointment and disillusionment with Moon’s DPK regime that led Yoon’s PPP regime to emerge. This was possible because the workers’ movement was weakened, thanks to its subordination to the DPK. If the working class had resolutely developed its independence and militancy under the DPK regime, its disappointment and disillusionment would have been a springboard for the workers’ movement and politics to take off, not the Far Right. The same is true for the future. In the end, the practical point is this: Doing everything we can to make the first scenario a reality — that is, doing everything we can to lead an explosive people’s uprising with a powerful working-class general strike — is the best preparation for the third scenario, even if the struggle fails and the PPP remains intact. The Way Forward for South Korea’s Working Class In the 2016 campaign to oust Park Geun-hye, the impeachment motion was passed 46 days after the revelation of Choi Soon-sil’s tablet computer on October 24. At that time, the line of “forcing Park to resign through the power of mass struggle,” which criticized the DPK for seeking a compromise with Park or impeachment within the bourgeois system, was supported by the majority at the candlelight mass rallies. But the mood shifted sharply toward a DPK-led push for impeachment after the November 30 general strike proved too weak. On December 9, the DPK led the impeachment drive and succeeded, taking all the gains of the candlelight protest. This time, however, the impeachment motion was passed 11 days after the December 3 self-coup attempt. Unlike in 2016, the path was set from the beginning as “impeachment of Yoon by the bourgeois system” instead of “forcing Yoon to resign through the power of mass struggle.” Why? The first is the learning effect from the experience of 2016. The second is that, once again, the KCTU was unable to organize a general strike powerful enough to “force Yoon to resign through the power of mass struggle.” In fact, the KCTU was in worse shape before the December 3 self-coup than it was before the revelation of Choi Soon-sil’s tablet computer in 2016. The third reason is that the DPK rejected all compromises from the beginning and demanded impeachment. The fourth reason is that there was a very strong public consensus that Yoon’s presidential power should be stopped as soon as possible for fear of a second declaration of martial law. Although the path of “impeachment of Yoon by the bourgeois system” was realized, the workers’ struggle did not follow the path of “forcing Yoon to resign through the power of mass struggle,” yet it has played a very important role since Yoon’s declaration of martial law on December 3. The decisive force that enabled the National Assembly to successfully pass a resolution demanding the lifting of martial law just two hours and 33 minutes after the declaration of martial law came from the thousands of workers and people who rushed to the National Assembly as soon as they heard the news, and the millions of workers and people who cheered them from all over the country. The mass rallies that have been going on since December 7 were the decisive force that led to the passage of the impeachment motion against Yoon, and they are the most important force in moving forward toward his removal from the presidency, his imprisonment and punishment for treason, and the dismantling of the PPP. The KCTU’s role in the struggle has been contradictory. On the one hand, it has played a significant role, but it has been very limited compared to its potential. At 3 a.m. on December 4, the KCTU declared an “indefinite general strike until Yoon resigns from the presidency.” In reality, however, it was a limited general strike that took place three times on December 5, 6, and 11, involving 50,000 to 100,000 workers, mainly in the metal industry and railway. The KCTU is playing a leading role in the mass rallies, and many of its members are participating in the rallies. The KCTU has been able to push back police barricades and clear the way at the mass rallies, and this has made a strong impression on the broader unorganized masses. The KCTU, however, has not realized its true potential. If the KCTU were to organize a powerful general strike, the mass rallies could develop into an explosive people’s uprising. But this has so far gone undiscussed in the KCTU’s official meetings or among rank-and-file activists. In the mass rallies, there was a noticeable increase in the initiative of young women in their 20s and 30s (2030 Women). Their representation in the mass rallies is similar to that of the 2008 and 2016 candlelight protests, but this time they were much more active than in the past. It is particularly impressive that militant solidarity from below, led by the 2030 Women, with the farmers’ protest against the police in Namtae-ryeong on December 21 and 22, won victory within 28 hours. Inspired by the “Namtae-ryeong Victory,” many South Koreans have spontaneously begun expressing solidarity with workers and people with disabilities fighting for their right to mobility. The 2030 Women, who have organized themselves in solidarity against discrimination and oppression and become the main actors in the square, are playing a vanguard role in the current situation. The key now is for the KCTU to organize a powerful general strike with the movement’s core demands — Yoon’s removal from the presidency, his arrest and punishment for treason, and the dismantling of the PPP — as well as various demands of the workers and people. Through this, the working class will lead the explosive people’s uprising and take control of the situation. To realize this, we must urgently organize activities from below to call for a powerful general strike by the KCTU. Left political organizations, militant rank-and-file activists, and workers in struggling workplaces must take the initiative to appeal to and convince the broader membership of the urgent need for a general strike. At the same time, we must raise the issue in the official organs of the KCTU for a full debate and a decisive resolution for the general strike. The bureaucratic regression of the workers’ movement may prevent us from achieving sufficient tangible results in the immediate future. On the other hand, in this dynamic situation, leaps can be made in unexpected ways. Whatever the outcome, it’s time to put our best foot forward. As we have seen, if the Far Right is not defeated this time, the global trend of economic impoverishment will paradoxically provide a broad social base for the further growth of the Far Right in South Korea. The most socially dangerous segment is young men in their 20s and 30s (2030 Men). The 2030 Men are generally considered quite conservative compared to the 2030 Women. If the economic hardship of unemployment and irregular work among 2030 Men worsens in the future, and misogyny and minority hatred intensify, it is possible that many of them will be captured as a strong social base for the Far Right. If this happens, the destructive power of the Far Right will multiply many times over. With the over-60s already an important base for the Far Right, it is also important to note that they suffer the worst elderly poverty among OECD nations. We must organize the struggle against these dangers, not only in the immediate situation, but also in the future. At its core, this means that the workers’ movement brings class demands to the fore to address youth unemployment, irregular work, and elderly poverty, and that the 2030 Women’s movement expands into an anti-capitalist, not separatist, movement to lead the 2030 Men.

2025-01-10 | 조회 560

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 497

[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 477

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 571

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 674

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 487

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 776