As Paul Gottfried has described in his book The Strange Death of Marxism, the international Left has moved on since 1953. It is no longer supportive of—or even interested in—Kim’s style of economic control. It has, instead, made its peace with capitalism—and even embraced the free flow of cheap labor across borders and the promotion of non-Whites within the multinational corporations it once labeled “fascist.”
Kim’s brand of xenophobic ultra-nationalism remains an embarrassment to the Left, a reminder of a former life. In turn, America’s self-styled “conservatives,” who define themselves mostly in terms of economic freedom—and like to imagine that their enemies dream of creating dogmatic, Soviet-style societies—are, much like Kim, living in a world of delusion.
It’s been said, Communism attacks the body; Liberalism rots the soul. Quite true. And so much of Eastern Europe, which was impoverished by the Politburo, has been protected from the ravages of Cultural Marxism—multiculturalism, feminism, and the soft totalitarianism that predominates in America and Western Europe. I’ve heard some rightists lament—only half-ironically—“The wrong side won the Cold War!”
Whatever kernel of truth such a sentiment holds, looking at Kim’s North Korea, particularly vis-à-vis its prosperous and productive co-nationals in the South, we should recognize just how inimical to human flourishing Marxian economics truly is.
