North KoreaBoard

Chosongul wrote:

Well, it is in Korean.

I know that.

Comradeland wrote:

Thank you for your input, that is an entirely reasonable position to have.
My position is this:
There was not a tremendous amount of desire to serve on the CC the last go around. The people in it now represent pretty much the finest the region has to offer (who wanted to participate). The idea of scheduled elections seems an unnecessary use of time and a distraction to the region. I support the method used by revolutionary worker councils, I would have it be in our constitution that we do not hold elections unless we have lets say a half dozen of the regions members call for an election. We have them when the membership thinks we need them.
There should never be trouble with elections, it should be a regional desire, not mandatory.

I back you now comrade.

Lemurian oceania wrote:

Are any comrades here on the Marxist Internet Archive Users Discussion Group on Facebook? https://www.facebook.com/groups/925823854110470/

Yes, though I don't feel comfortable giving out my identity.

Scieca wrote:

Yes, though I don't feel comfortable giving out my identity.

Nothing wrong with that, comrade.

Not the best source, but better than for-profit bourgeoisie sources. I couldn't seem to find a version of this from a revolutionary source.

Cuba to legalize small and medium-sized private businesses
HAVANA (AP) — Cuba announced Tuesday that it will legalize small- and medium-sized private businesses in a move that could significantly expand private enterprise in one of the world's last communist countries.

Cuban business owners and economic experts said they were hopeful the reform would allow private firms to import wholesale supplies and export products to other countries for the first time, removing a major obstacle to private business growth.

"This is a tremendously important step," said Alfonso Valentin Larrea Barroso, director-general of Scenius, a cooperatively run economic consulting firm in Havana. "They're creating, legally speaking, the non-state sector of the economy. They're making that sector official."

While the government offered no immediate further details, the new business categories appear to be the next stage in reforms initiated by President Raul Castro after he took over from his brother Fidel Castro in 2008. While those reforms have allowed about half a million Cubans to start work in the private sector, the process has been slow and marked by periodic reversals.

The government has regularly cracked down on private businesses that flourish and compete with Cuba's chronically inefficient state monopolies. The latest backlash came after President Barack Obama met private business owners during his March 20-22 visit to Cuba, prompting hard-line communists to warn that the U.S. wants to turn entrepreneurs into a tool to overturn the island's socialist revolution.

The Communist Party documents, published in a special tabloid sold at state newsstands Tuesday, said a category of small, mid-sized and "micro" private business was being added to a master plan for social and economic development approved by last month's Cuban Communist Party Congress. The twice-a-decade meeting sets the direction for the single-party state for the coming five years.

The 32-page party document published Tuesday is the first comprehensive accounting of the decisions taken by the party congress, which was closed to the public and international press. State media reported few details of the debate or decisions taken at the meeting but featured harsh rhetoric from leading officials about the continuing threat from U.S. imperialism and the dangers of international capitalism.

That tough talk, it now appears, was accompanied by what could be a major step in Cuba's ongoing reform of its centrally planned economy.

"Private property in certain means of production contributes to employment, economic efficiency and well-being, in a context in which socialist property relationships predominate," reads one section of the "Conceptualization of the Cuban Economic and Social Model of Socialist Development."

Vanessa Arocha, a 56-year-old architect who makes hand-made purses and bags at home under a self-employed worker's license, said she dreamed of forming a legally recognized small business that could import supplies and machinery and hire neighbors looking for extra income.

"I could import fittings, zippers, vinyl," she said. "Being a small business would be a new experience, one we know little about, but something very positive."

The government currently allows private enterprise by self-employed workers in several hundred job categories ranging from restaurant owner to hairdresser. Many of those workers have become de-facto small business owners employing other Cubans in enterprises providing vital stimulus to Cuba's stagnant centrally planned economy.

The Cuban government blames the half-century-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba for strangling the island's economy. Cuba's new class of entrepreneurs say the embargo is a major obstacle but also lodges frequent, bitter complaints about the difficulties of running a business in a system that does not officially recognize them.

Low-level officials often engage in crackdowns on successful businesses for supposed violations of the arcane rules on self-employment. And the government maintains a monopoly on imports and export that funnels badly needed products exclusively to state-run enterprises.

Due to its dilapidated state-run economy, Cuba imports most of what it consumes, from rice to air conditioners. Most private businesses are forced to buy scarce supplies from state retail stores or on the black market, increasing the scarcity of basic goods and driving up prices for ordinary Cubans. Many entrepreneurs pay networks of "mules" to import goods in checked airline baggage, adding huge costs and delays.

The latest change will almost certainly take months to become law. Such reforms typically require formal approval by Cuba's National Assembly, which meets only twice a year.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a7038453c4234c1eb3bb026a355245d4/cuba-legalize-small-and-medium-sized-private-businesses

:(

Something important to note is that Cuba has in recent years greatly expanded workers' cooperatives. Most bourgeois media sources don't make a distinction between these and capitalist arrangements, they just see that they're not part of the state sector. Still, there has been an expansion of foreign capital in certain areas, similar to Chinese SEZs, and that alone is worrying. But I'd like to hear directly from Cuban sources if this amounts to an open embrace of capitalism or just a formalization of their non-state directed cooperative economy. I see the move towards petty production and markets as a step backwards regardless but it may not be as bad as it seems.

Castro denies new companies signify "restoration of capitalism":
Cuban President Raul Castro admitted Saturday that micro, small and medium-sized private companies have proliferated on the island following the economic reforms set in motion over the past five years, but warned that this does not in any way imply the "restoration of capitalism." In his inaugural address to the 7th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, the only one that is legal, Castro recalled that the state will continue being the principal authority for economic management in the Cuban socialist model, and urged people to forget about the "euphemisms" and "to call things by their real name."

http://www.efe.com/efe/english/world/castro-denies-new-companies-signify-restoration-of-capitalism/50000262-2898894

Comradeland wrote:

Castro denies new companies signify "restoration of capitalism":
Cuban President Raul Castro admitted Saturday that micro, small and medium-sized private companies have proliferated on the island following the economic reforms set in motion over the past five years, but warned that this does not in any way imply the "restoration of capitalism." In his inaugural address to the 7th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, the only one that is legal, Castro recalled that the state will continue being the principal authority for economic management in the Cuban socialist model, and urged people to forget about the "euphemisms" and "to call things by their real name."
http://www.efe.com/efe/english/world/castro-denies-new-companies-signify-restoration-of-capitalism/50000262-2898894

Didn't people like Khrushchev and Dang Xiaoping say that? "Ohh were not going back to capitalism, it's just a few little economic reforms" right, gotcha.

Does it annoy anyone else that they use "Stalin's" as there scale for authoritarianism?
Why not use something like "Pinochet's" or "Syngman Rhee's "?

Oh, goody! A new notice! I wonder what it could be.

page=rmb/postid=19487846

Oh, right.

Why won't Obama apologize for a war crime?
Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima, but the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is in Asia to promote militarism and imperial rivalries, writes Khury Petersen-Smith.

MAYBE HISTORY will measure Barack Obama's tenure as president not by the number of years that he spent in office, but by the number of hopes that he betrayed.

The true scale of U.S. empire's devastation while Obama was at the helm won't be known until he leaves office early next year. Only then will we know the total number of countries bombed by Obama--we're at seven so far--of children killed by U.S. forces, of non-combatants killed by Obama's wildly escalated drone war, of hospitals bombarded by the U.S. and its allies, of Palestinian land stolen by Israeli forces equipped with U.S. weapons and bolstered by Obama's enthusiastic support, and unfortunately, the list could go on.

Most of these crimes weren't direct betrayals of specific demands. When Obama took office, no one petitioned him to not bomb a hospital and then absolve those who committed the atrocity. For most of his progressive supporters, this was simply unimaginable--yet that's exactly what Obama did.

For the most part, acts like these were not reversals of specific promises that Obama made, but rather steps, one after the other, along the same path that Obama's predecessor George W. Bush walked, taking us further down the road of American imperial violence.

https://socialistworker.org/2016/05/27/why-wont-obama-apologize-for-a-war-crime