Reposting the top comment of this thread which is really good: https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/ahvu9h/is_north_korea_a_hereditary_dictatorship/

The fact is that Kim Jong-Un, and his father, and his grandfather, do not and did not hold the highest positions of power in the government. The de facto head of state in the D.P.R.K is currently Kim Young-Nam, who has held this position since 1998. The current position of Kim Jong-Un is as you said, as he previously held the position of Chairman of the National Defense Commission, which was altered in 2016 to better reflect the situation at hand with better organisation. Kim Il-Sung held the positions of Premier and President of the Presidium for a long time, though he did retire from the latter in 1983, being succeeded by Yang Hyong-Sop; this is unsurprising, as Kim Il-Sung was a incredibly competent and well-respected leader, and especially so among his own people. The fact is, influential positions have become more decentralised with each generation, as the power of the state becomes more distributed among the proletariat and in accordance with society, in a rather natural way that may, hopefully, lead to a complete withering way of the state in future, as other aspects, too, decline, assuming a defeat of capitalist powers simultaneously with the existence of the D.P.R.K.

Allegedly, Kim Il-Sung did suggest Kim Jong-Il succeed him, because Jong-Il had been instilled with a revolutionary ideology for his entire life. The rest of the party and the people are said to have agreed with this - through their usual discussions, one would assume - and so, Kim Jong-Il succeeded his father in some positions, whilst others were removed, split up and redistributed, or reassigned. That is why there is no longer a President of the D.P.R.K: The position was no longer necessary, and equivalent powers were to be divided among multiple roles.

On your point of their democracy: The decision of whom is elected is not done so with the ballot. The voting is done through open discussions prior to the ballot, comparable to the Soviet design, which could also be seen in Libya to some degree. After a common consensus is met through these periods of discussion, the vote is cast as a confirmation of this selection, hence the lack of negative votes for candidates; democratic centralism requires unity, after all, and so does a socialist state. You can find many posts here that touch on the matter. I recommend this for some more information.

So, in short: The D.P.R.K is not a hereditary dictatorship, with power being decentralised through successive generations, and the election of officials are made through common consensus as decided by mass discussions.

Hopefully that helps.

I mean if you’re under feudal relations supporting capitalism makes you progressive, but right now we’re operating under socialized production with capitalists constraining production around exchange value so yeah supporting maintaining capitalism is right wing. Let socialized production benefit society.

Hopefully Chinese democracy will prevail against western authoritarianism.

Authority exercised by the proletariat through a DotP is qualitatively different than authority exercised by capital through a DoC.

Read the analysis of the Paris commune in “State or Revolution”.

I think you’re getting hung up on an artificial separation of politics and economics, you should look up a critique of this or investigate why political economy is a useful framework for analysis.

Really good book! A little bit inaccessible in the first two chapters though.

Jokes aside, a good start is to join a socialist org, participate, and start developing yourself politically. I believe cowbee has a good reading list.

But only if you’re doing what needs to be done.

Not a dude, please don’t “bro” me

Here is another helpful link, on citizen perception of the importance of democracy and whether their government is democratic.

It was founded by a former NATO secretary so it has a pro-western bias.

https://allianceofdemocracies.org/democracy-perception-index

Here is a chart sourced from its its 2024 report. As you can see Chinese people have more faith in democracy and the democratic nature of their government than westerners do.

The whole brainwashing thing is nonsense, as Cowbell pointed out you misread the data on the 11 percent. It seems like you are misreading data to support your preconceived notions.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/

China is a democracy, even studies by conservative western institutions show Chinese people have higher satisfaction with their government, more belief in the importance of democracy, and more belief in the democratic nature of their government than western European and American citizens do for their own governments.

They have a more comprehensive democracy too. Consultative processes and deliberative processes are enshrined in institutions in a way that they are not within western bourgeois democracies.

I thought the US killed millions, not 100,000s?

Dear God, are you claiming that the proof for the three things I asked for proof for can only be found at this specific archive? Thay doesn’t even make sense, how is proof of widespread government violence in order to prevent reunification found there? How is proof of extensive nuremburg-esque trials post-reunificstion found there?

Seems like the soviet government was more responsive than contemporary western governments, but not as much as east Germany: https://artsmatter.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2025/01/28/trans-visibility-in-the-late-soviet-union/#%3A~%3Atext=First%2C+they+became+visible%2C+at%2Crecognized+as+ordinary+Soviet+citizens.

Okay so you are claiming that there is proof but we would have to go to Berlin to find proof? In the age where internet archives exist?

If neither of us are willing to physically go there than why did you cite it as a source to support your claims?

Cool than you’d be able to share things from the archives that meet those specified criterion?

Please link me to sources then.

“Whataboutism” being considered a logical fallacy was made up by an Irish Unionist (as in supporting Ireland being a British colony) because he didn’t like it when people responded to “the irish resistance is violent” with “the British are magnitudes more violent and their violence wouldn’t stop if the violent resistance stopped”

Consider understanding the historical context of a line of argumentation before using it.

Wow, that sounds horrible, I bet there were a lot of prosecutions of the people who carried those things out once the government reunified!

Oh, and the physical evidence and documentation of those torture dungeons after the wall fell, there must be so much evidence of all the horrors committed!

And all the violence the evil communist government must have done to keep itself in power and prevent reunification must have been really evident, I bet we can find newspaper clippings and even video on the widespread violence that happened in an effort to hold on to power.

Wait, I’m getting reports that none of those things actually happened, fuck. It would have lined up so nicely with the narrative taught to me by American education and popular media, that’s a real bummer.

As labor is further socialized (basically centralizing and then running itself without capitalist intervention) you end up having labor done by men and women and women still being responsible for more domestic duties which are labor but not considered labor(because those being done for free subsidizes capitalist profit) the solution though isn’t to keep women in the household, it is to do socialism, where domestic labor can be socialized (it isn’t under capitalism because why would you socialize labor you’re already getting for free?)

Yeah, and no fault divorce keeps the workforce happier and reduces domestic violence (meaning less injured and killed workers), abortion on demand makes it easier for people to continue working, and socializing former domestic labor improves the efficiency of that work and frees up labor for leisure or other labor, but those things are still good and part of the socialist feminist project.

I shouldn’t have to arm myself with a deadly weapon to avoid being raped, and doing so significantly increases my chances of being killed.

Why don’t you go advise men not to rape instead of telling women how not to get raped? Statistically, some of your male friends and family are rapists or will be.

Also killing people -especially up close like that- is really traumatic no matter how much of a tough guy persona you put on. As someone who has PTSD from sexual violence, I would not press a button that would go back in time and let me shoot my attacker while he was on top of me as he started to escalate, entirely removed from the inherent value of human life argument.

I cannot stress enough how incredibly performatively callous and how out of touch with the experiences of women and the reality of killing this meme is. Get a fucking grip.