Guerrilla History - North Korea & Industrial Agriculture w/ Zhun Xu

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring back our great friend and comrade Zhun Xu, whom you may remember from our episode  Sanctions Against China & Their Political Economy from our Sanctions As War miniseries.  In this episode, we discuss Zhun terrific new article in Monthly Review, Industrial Agriculture: Lessons from North Korea!  This conversation was incredibly generative, and will certainly be of great benefit to you whether you are someone who studies agricultural systems, the DPRK, or none of the above.  Stay tuned, Zhun will appear on the show again VERY soon for another great topic and discussion... Zhun Xu is Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York. He is on the editorial boards of Science and Society and the Journal of Labor and Society. His recent book is From Commune to Capitalism: How China’s Peasants Lost Collective Farming and Gained Urban Poverty. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare, but they put some guerrilla action on. Aurella History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.

I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, unfortunately not joined by my other usual co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, who of course is a historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. One of the downfalls of having an academic as your co-host is that, you know, he has to do things like dissertation meetings, which happen to be at the same time as a our recordings periodically. But Adnan will be back for the next conversation. Do not fear this is going to be hopefully the last one for a while that I will be running

solo on alongside our guest. We have a terrific and returning guest today with about a really excellent article, which we've been talking off the record for about 50 minutes at this point, listeners. But before I introduce the guest and the article, I would like to remind you, listeners, that you can help support the show and allow us to keep making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A history. And you can keep up to date with everything that we are doing as a podcast as well as what Adnan and I are each doing individually by following us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A

underscore pod. Now, as I said, we have an excellent and returning guest. We have Jun Xu, who is an associate professor at John Jay College and the Graduate Center City University of New York talking about a new article of his. I just also want to mention that he is also the author of the really terrific book from commune to capitalism, how China's peasants lost collective farming and gained urban poverty, which will be an upcoming episode on the show in the very near future listeners. So do stay tuned for that.

make sure you subscribe so you don't miss when that episode drops. We had Joanne on to talk in the past about sanctions. He was part of our sanctions as war series talking about China and the DPRK, and that's going to be semi-related to the episode that we're talking about today. Hello, Joan. It's nice to have you back on the show. Thank you, Henry. It's always a great honor for me to be talking with you.

And this time, not with Aetlan, but it's always great to be back at the program. and look forward to the conversation today. Oh, absolutely. Like I said, we've been having a really good time off the record for 50 minutes, but listeners, this next part you're going to get to listen to. We're going to be talking about the really great article, Industrial Agriculture, Lessons from North Korea, which was recently published in Monthly Review.

I will have a link to this article in the show notes. So be sure to click on it, check it out. It's a really great article. And it's related to the upcoming book that Salvatore and Galdi Mauro and I are putting out as well, which we will certainly work into this conversation. But, Yuan, it's like I said, a great article. And one of the things that you open the article with is how Western mainstream media, another thing that I like to talk about quite a bit, often portrays the DPRK about how

it's a threat to the United States and U.S. allies, and conversely about how there is abject poverty and hunger prevalent within the country. I would like to open this conversation by discussing with you a little bit about these narratives that are propagated about the DPRK and how you, why, I guess why you start with the narrative around the DPRK before we actually talk about industrial agriculture in the DPRK. Oh, thanks for the great question. I think I, you know, I do this research with the recognition that I, I myself, need education. on the, you know, on DPRK, on ecological agriculture. And, you know, so it's not particularly blatant aiming the Western audience, Western writers for not having that much knowledge about DPRK,

because, you know, I didn't have much knowledge about DPRK, despite the fact that I grew up in China. I supposedly, we have much more close contact with that country. And to a certain extent, yes, I mean, we got to learn certain historical facts about the DPRK. There is not so much demonization about DPRK in the official media, official articles published in China. But what I found, you know, very interesting was that there are many non-official media, non-official conversations that people have in China are very similar to the kind of conversation that you would find, the American mainstream media or officials' conversations.

That is, DPRK has this, you know, really has the two things that you mentioned. First, it's evil. It's an evil state, rogue state, doing whatever to threaten other countries. And obviously this was because the DPRK was controlled, is controlled by this single family, the Kim family, which itself shows, proves to many people that this must be a terrible place, terrible country. And second, at the same time, you know, in this, you know, people also think that, believes that DPRK, lives the people, they are living miserable conditions. And it's not just they, but ever since the Korean War, the DPRK people have been living miserable lives, they have never done anything successful.

The whole model, the DPRK social system, has been a failure. So the two images, I mean, they coexist at the same time. obviously accommodate different needs when you want to show that, oh, we have this huge threat from this rogue state, then, you know, DPRK is a very strong military power. And with this very, like, bad family ruling it. And when you want to make the argument that, oh, we're going to, you know, we're going to help the people there, then the argument turns around saying that, oh, the DPRK people have been under starvation, and it's, it's, you know, we're not against the DPRK people, in other words. We're just against the DPRK regime. And, you know, implying that

we need a regime change. So everything, all the problem will be solved. I think that's some of the common messages that you would receive from the mainstream sources in the West. And obviously, I find that to be very unsatisfactory, very un-dileptical. And oftentimes, those arguments do not have a solid evidence. Rather, it's based on some stereotypical understanding of what DPRK is and how the DPRK people, you know, do things. So that's why I started this with this general description of how people perceive EPRK in the West. I know I hate bringing up the Lacerdo Stalin book in all of these conversations as I do. But one of the things that this reminds me of, and listeners, if you want to hear our discussion of this part of the book, we do talk about it in the guerrilla history episode on the Stalin book.

But one of the things that's used in terms of narrative around Stalin is around the time of the start of World War II, there was two narratives that were constructed. One was that Stalin was so afraid of making decisions that nobody could even find him when Operation Barbarossa kicked off. Like he was basically hiding in closet so that no decision making would be delegated to him as the leader of the country. And on the other narrative is that Stalin was some absolutely brutal, autocratic, single-handed, you know, he was making every decision in the country. It's, of course, these two things are mutually exclusive, but these two different narratives were wielded different ways. One would be to show that he was incompetent and ineffective.

And the other one would show that he was brutal and autocratic and all-powerful, tyrannical. Again, these things are rather mutually exclusive, especially when you're talking about a single event, but depending on what way you're trying to portray him, you can utilize one of those narratives or the other in the same way that you're showing that there's these two narratives that are constructed about the DPRK that are utilized. I mean, these two narratives are not as mutually exclusive, but they're utilized at various times in certain contexts for specific political aims by the imperialist West to demonize or denigrate

the DPRK in one way or another, depending on what that context calls for. So I see that is a little bit of a parallel. And I just wanted to raise that. Now, before we start talking about the agricultural policy and the economic conditions of the DPRK over time, I do want to mention that, of course, you do note in here that there were dramatic food shortages and starvation that occurred over the course of the DPRK at some points significantly more than others, which we're going to talk about during this conversation. But there was a line here that was quite interesting before we get into the policy side of things and the economic situation over time, which is, and I'm going to quote you here, it is worth noting that among the former socialist bloc countries, North Korea was the only one that experienced dramatic food shortages and starvation following the demise of the Soviet Union.

Now, of course, it's worth noting that many of these other socialist bloc countries had fallen apart at that point as well. But I would like you to take that quote and kind of construct a little bit of understanding for the listeners regarding what the actual situation regarding food shortages were. Because with this narrative that is constructed about the DPRK, like you talked about, people get this idea that it has been a continuous starvation event since like 1953. Like, they've been starving continuously for the last, you know, 71 years at this point. Of course, that's not the case. So can you talk a little bit about how the food shortages have, you know, the presence or lack of food shortages have changed over time and what periods that was particularly acute because that might help set us up for the policy and economic discussion.

Oh, yeah, I really appreciate that question. And, you know, we as observers of contemporary society, we sometimes unintentionally project what we see today back to some time in the past, you know, we look at the Western countries that, well, they have a parliamentary democracy or some kind of universal suffrage. But we know that would be wrong to project that, oh, so 200 years ago, they also had the same. thing, you know, I mean, this parliamentary democracy or universal suffrage, same with the DPRK, that, you know, in the last 30 years, it's quite true that DPRK has been struggling with a shortage of food. The, I think the most, the worst part of this was that when they

first went through food shortage in the 1990s, that they called it. audio march or hot march, where they, so there was this transition from a relatively food of fluid society to a food shortage society. That experience, I think, is the most, you know, the worst part of this whole thing. And you look at the past 30 years and you would say, well, you know, for the entire history from 1953, as you'd say, the DPRK people have been always struggling with starvation. But that is definitely wrong because the country had a fairly successful agriculture and food production for a long time until in the 1990s when they saw a food shortage. I singled out North Korea as the only, you know, really only former

socialist country that experienced severe food shortage after the trans, after, this whole, the demise of the Soviet bloc, because it was particularly bad. I mean, all the countries, Russia, all the, you know, Central Asian republics, as long as they have some extended period of economic recession, there is some food insecurity or, you know, declining food nutrition, I think in most of those places. But none of them, be compared to, they would not have the same magnitude of the crisis that we saw in the DPRK. I think this would also go, another good contrast with this was that, that, you know, in the history of socialist construction, many countries, was they started doing industrialization because of

you know, you know, pretty much sure policies because of the raw execution of those programs, they would always get into some kind of food problem, agricultural problem. This was transparent in the Soviet history in the 1930s when they had this starvation. It was also the case in China. when the Chinese high industrialization and the end of 1950s it also caused an unbalanced urban rural relationship which caused food shortage widespread

in the country. But you don't see a similar thing in DPRK it seems that the DPRK policy makers, the government has had been very stillful. They avoided the very bad scenario of food shortage during their high industrialization, which they succeed in doing so.

And so, you know, in the 1990s, when the whole thing started to change, the DPRK experience was very unique that, you know, it started, at that point, it started to have a star region. So the context is quite different. Yeah, and I find that really interesting that we're talking about these differing contexts, particularly regarding industrialization. And we'll talk about industrial agriculture policy in just a bit, which again is something that is directly related to the upcoming book.

But Salvatore and I are translating. So, you know, hopefully we'll have some generative discussion on that point. And perhaps as we go into the future, we'll be able to continue that conversation. But turning back into the article now, you then turn towards pre-190 North Korean economy and agriculture. And what you talk about is the fact that although North Korea was receiving support from other socialist countries like the Soviet Union and China, there was this Jushe idea in the country, which is something that I think we talked about a bit in our episode on the same. on North Korea that we did a year and a half ago or so, which listeners, I will link to that episode in the show notes as well if you want to hear Chuang's previous appearance on the show. But I think that talking about this self-reliance mentality and ideology of the country might be a

good place to turn to next as we then start to talk about how this mentality related to policy decisions that were made, and then also we're actually running contrary to some of the policy decisions that were made, which we'll talk about later in the conversation as we talk about the chemicalization of agriculture. So can you talk a little bit about Juche, self-reliance, and how this related to kind of some of the decisions that were being made in that early, early period of DPRK's independent history? I really appreciate the thoughts and the questions. I think in the last century, the idea of self-reliance, not so much of self-sufficiency, but self-reliance has been a strong component of many national liberation programs. Many former colonies and colonies, when they strike for independence, they wanted to be independent from the dominant.

imperialist system. So, in other words, it had to be self-reliant to a certain extent. So even within that context, there's not so many countries that actually try to do it because it's very hard to do so. And one of his earlier books, Samir Amin, for example, in 1983, he published the book, The Future of Maoism. You know, the title is about Maoism, but the book was really about a general preist, the political economy of the global south.

So, Amin basically, is that you can divide all the third world countries into three groups. You know, there's clearly Cumberdor states and there is national bourgeois states. Then there is self-plained Marxist socialist states. and China and DPRK belonged to the third category. It's self-claimed socialist, Marxist. And he argued that, you know, so the China really pursued a self-reliance strategy. So did the DPRK. I think if for, you know, for DPRK, the idea of Juti, or, you know, whatever pronunciation we may have.

But in Chinese, the Chuchi means, you know, yourself as the primary object, something like that. I'm sorry, self-reliance. I think we have to recognize that that idea, it was always something that the elites, the ruling class on the Korean panaceola, wanted to avoid. when the Korean old feudal elites, they always follow the policy of Sidi or Shida working for the powerful, that working for the powerful can refer to mostly to the governments in China. It can also refer to the states in Japan, but they are willing to work as a good comber door, let's say, for the larger, stronger foreign states. So that has been a long-standing tradition. And, you know, we know that after the Korean independence, the United States and also, you know, this whole elites in southern part of the peninsula, but they try to put all this older Japanese company, you know, people

who work with the Japanese authorities, right, colonial power, back to the South Korean government. So you have a whole bunch of people like that. And the DPRK had a clear break with that long tradition, maybe a thousand year tradition of this strong, comfortable element. They really wanted to build something independent, something different. So I think that was a great, you know, really good determination that they had and they really try to follow through with that determination. You know, and that's a great explanation, and I'm glad that you highlighted, I probably expressed myself incorrectly earlier, I'll have to listen back, but when you said that it's self-reliance, not self-sufficiency, that's a very critical distinction. And also very important when you're thinking about geography. When we're talking about having self-sufficiency, if you're in a place like the Soviet Union, which spans 11 times, zones and goes really far north to actually pretty far south and various climactic zones and

various it's much easier you know a very rich and natural resource it's much easier if you're talking about self-sufficiency in an area like the dprk which my next question will be related to the cultivatable land and how that relates to industrial policy industrial agriculture and agricultural policy, your context and your confines are much different. And that's why it's important to stress that it's self-reliance and not self-sufficiency, because self-sufficiency in that context is a pipe dream, whereas self-reliance is actually something that you can have some ideological basis for and determine how self-reliance can be carried out, you know, operating within an international context, with other partner nations abroad. It's not

about producing everything yourself. It's about having that reliance on oneself. There is a distinction there, and I'm happy that you highlighted that. I hope that I express myself decently earlier. But again, I'll hear when I edit this. But the next question is about the geography of the DPRK. So when we're talking about what is possible for the DPRK to do within its geographic context, it becomes much more difficult because, as you point out in this article, they have very, very strict constraints on what they are able to do within their national borders. So if you are able to explain a little bit about what that geographic context is, and then how that then influenced their agricultural policy as they were determining how best to feed the people

of the country, that would be really useful for us at this point, I think. Oh, yeah. Thanks for the comments. I agree with this distinction, very important decision between autarchy and self-reliance. And, you know, we're not, we don't have the fantasy of building socialism in one tiny place. That is, and we have to, you know, any effort of building a different society has to be international effort. Otherwise, it just wouldn't work. But in the 20th century history, and now, I mean, we do have, I mean, the reality that we work with is that smaller states, they, that was they have the revolution. They are, obviously, they are able to get support from other, you know, socialist or progressive countries.

but to a large extent, they still have to find sufficient food, sufficient materials from their own territories. This proved to be, I think, difficult for DPRK. When the Japanese colonizers, when they control the peninsula, they have different destinations for different places. For example, when they conquered and separated Taiwan from the mainland, they designated Taiwan as the place for producing in sugar and rice as a more subtropical weather. It's good for that. For the Korean Peninsula, it was for light industry, and the northern part was for the heavy industry.

So that division had a clear impact after the peninsula was divided, divided between the two. The DPRK inherited a pretty good, heavy industrial base from that division of labor within the Japanese colonial empire. And the southern part had more light industry. It has some agriculture, but even the sudden part did not have that much aerobat. Just to insert myself very briefly here, when you say that they inherited a very good labor base for heavy industry, it is important to stress the, of course, the labor base and not the infrastructural base, because that was all wiped out during the American imperialist war on Korea, 80% of all of the buildings in. North Korea were leveled. So even having that, you know, that legacy of a heavy industrial base within the north after the, you know, quote unquote, Korean war, that was then essentially just people who were trained within the heavy industry and no longer the infrastructure. That was then

all had to be put back together brick by brick at that point. I just wanted to make that for, you know, always worth contextualizing how devastating the imperialist war on Korea. was, especially in the north where pretty much everything was completely leveled. Yes, I think that's a really crucial point to make that they didn't get a free gift from the colonizers in any way. Most of the tangible, I think, assets were destroyed in the war. But they still get, you know, I think they still get real ways. You get people who were trained some has some industrial expertise on some of these productive activities. So those were different.

But still, they have to build from scratch. And agriculture was not a traditional focus of that country. But the DPRK leadership led by King Yusong that had this clear vision that they wanted to build a so-called like modern, let's say, a modern agricultural system in that country. And obviously the modern here refers to mostly American-type agriculture. That, how you have large farms, large tractors, and they obviously, you know, with all this good chemical inputs, and that's all fossil field-based. So that, I think that was like, died in line for the DPRK, because generally that was what people believed at the time.

This was not just in DPRK, but also in the People's Republic China, in the Soviet Union, in many other countries that they try to do this, because this is the future. This was considered to be the future of socialist agriculture. Yeah, I'm going to flag us up right here, just a little bit more specifically, and one of the things that you say in the article is that 80% of the DPRK is that 80% of the DPRK is mountainous and only about 14% of their territory is arable land and the summer growing season is also short, which then puts very, you know, severe constraints on what is able to be cultivated in that area, which then pushed them to adopting this heavily mechanized and chemical

intensive agricultural policy. And as you mentioned, this is not unique to the DPRK, This is something that was seen all over the place. We saw heavy fertilizer use in many, many places. We saw it in South Korea, China, Japan, India to not so much of an extent, but, you know, they did pick up over time. And the Soviet Union also, but this is one of the things that I want to flag us up for. Again, the book that Salvatore Engel de Mauro and I are currently translating is an agro-ecological history of Cuba and the Soviet Union. And listeners, you'll be able to see that.

coming out from Isker Books in the very new future under the tentative title, Communism, the highest stage of ecology. So keep your eyes peeled,iskarbooks.org for that. PDF will be available for free, of course. But one of the things that we look at in the book, again, it's a translation. I didn't write the book, but we're translating it and putting an introduction on it. One of the things that we see within the book is that when you look at the chemicalization or the chemization, depending on how you translate,

of the agricultural sector, and specifically using chemical fertilizers in the Soviet Union context, it's super interesting. If you look at the graphs under the Stalin administration, what you see is that there was much more of a focus on biological side of the agricultural industry, and not nearly so much on the chemical side. But as soon as Stalin died and then Hhrushchev took the reins after, you know, that little intervening period, you see a skyrocketing of the chemical fertilizer usage within the agricultural sector of the Soviet Union, and that carried on for decades in many cases, in many ways up to today. And the next question will be about the pitfalls of chemical fertilizers, both in terms of from an ecological side, as well as, again,

This is a very fossil fuel intensive, you know, way of organizing an agricultural sector and as a country that is relying on imports of fossil fuels that creates some issues. But the point was is that, you know, what you'll be able to see in this upcoming book, listeners, is that there is this very sharp shift in the Soviet period under Khrushchev, not under Stalin, to match more or less the trend that we're seeing in these other countries. But as June is saying, it's super interesting that we see this heavy, heavy chemical fertilizer usage, which in many ways is enforced by the conditions, both in terms of, again, the geographic constraints of the DPRK, as well as the sanctions that were being put on the country.

So can you talk a little bit about, you know, I think most of our listeners are not super into like agricultural policy, so maybe just a very brief overview of some of the benefits versus drawbacks of chemical fertilizers from an ecological perspective. But then also, again, as you mentioned, there is this, it's a very fossil fuel intensive way of cultivating and of running an agricultural policy. And within the confines of the DPRK, that does run very contrary to this self-reliance model. So if you can take it away with those two points. Yeah, sure.

And, you know, I would like to mention that I'm super excited about the book that Henry and Salvadori are working on right now. And, you know, really looking forward to learn more about the Soviet Union history and also studying the agricultural ecology in general. So I'm really excited about that. Regarding the PRK's chemical agriculture, I think it was, to a certain extent, you know, the people, the scientists at the time, they, you know, they had a common idea that a good way of developing agriculture would be supplementing the soil with some chemical inputs. because, again, naturally, the soils would have deficiency in certain elements, and a good way of compensating for that deficiency would be provide some chemical inputs to the soil.

So that makes sense. But when you actually do it, oftentimes that it turns into a, increasingly intensive use of chemical inputs on the soil. And we know that they now a very influential concept of metabolic rift developed by John Benjamin Foster, that if there's the, you don't actually, you know, by just applying chemical inputs, you don't really repair what is missing or what would be depleted in the soil. There's only one point of that, but you lose all the other organic matters and other nutrients from the soil. So it's basically, I think, based on this very dualistic imagination of country and urban relationship,

that we can just do whatever to the soil with all the magical industrial inputs and they can just produce food. then, you know, the modern way of life is that everyone move to the city and, you know, move away from agriculture, just like in the United States, very few people, very, very few people are related to agriculture, and most people are working in a city in urban life. Or if you have, you know, desire a more comfortable life, you move to the suburbs, and you're still, and not agriculture. And the countryside basically died in most, you know, capital. capitalist societies. And even though in DPRT and many other socialist countries, people

wanted to be different from capitalism. They wanted to end exploitation. They wanted to end urban rural this divide. But the way they do it, by building up the industrial agriculture, by depleting the soil, by, you know, just increasingly rely on industrial chemical inputs, it reproduces, I think, many of those problems that we saw in capitalism, in capitalist agriculture. So that was not sustainable. But sustainability is one thing. You know, it's something that you can, I think, in the socialist system, if, Once we realize that this is something is not sustainable, we can still change it. It wouldn't take much.

But the, but DPRK also lived in this environment, this particular geopolitical space, that it has faced so much constraints that it cannot, it does not have that much space to maneuver around this whole thing. Because it's the country, as Henry mentioned, didn't have much, has much arable land. And it had to, you know, the hope is to develop this highly intensive agriculture with, you know, the huge amount of chemical inputs. And the country doesn't have oil resource. It has coal, has other very important mineral resources, but no petrol. So it means that they have to buy the oil from somewhere else. And with, again, with the U.S. blockade with this

civil war in Korea, they couldn't get anything outside the socialist block. So basically it meant that they have to buy from Soviet Union and China, you know, when they start building this whole thing. And so they developed this reliance on the supply from Soviet Union and China when they try to build a independent self-reliance agriculture, which can produce, you know, a lot of food, you know, rice and meat soup for the Korean people, based on the imagination of this, basically, you know, this urbanized modern society. So it's really, it's a lot of contradictions were combined together into this one place in KPRK. Yeah, absolutely. And when you're talking about soil and chemical fertilizers. There's a book that I would like to recommend to

the listeners to check out for kind of an introduction to all of this discussion of soil. It is again a book by Salvatore Engoldemaru, who's getting about his eighth mention of this episode already. Not that I have a problem with that. Salvatore is my best friend, and I'm not only saying that because I know that he's going to be listening to this episode, just, you know, he genuinely is. But he has an excellent book, which is 10 years old at this point, But it taught me a lot about soil, which I was not nearly as up on as I, well, as I am now and as I would like to be. It's called Ecology, Soil and the Left, an eco-social approach came out 10 years ago at this point. Really terrific book.

Excellent introductory text for somebody who wants to learn more about ecology and soil. It helps to have a little bit of a science background. I do. But you don't need one to check out this. book, but understanding soil is super important if we're talking about the agrarian question, if we're talking about food sovereignty. All of these questions are absolutely rooted in understanding soil and ecology and agricultural policy. You have to understand all of these things in order to have a true understanding of how these processes work. And soil, I feel, and feel free

to chime in, June, if you agree or disagree with me, I feel like, soil is the side of that that's left out the most. I think that when we talk about ecological policy and ecological impacts of certain policies, that's something that talks about pretty frequently. If we're talking about agricultural policy, even that gets talked about quite a bit. But soil itself is often forgotten about or treated as something that you can just dump chemicals in to revive or to replace things that are depleted or things that were never there in the first place rather than trying to actually understand soil and the complex relationships

that are taking place within soil right under our nose. So a little bit of a digression on my part here, but I do think that more people on the left need to actually think about soil. I know it's maybe not the most trendy or vogue topic, but super important. And that's a good book to start with if you want to check that out. But I want to turn us to talking about economics a little bit and an economic history of the DPRK because that is going to then come crashing in to this agricultural policy and the reliance on chemical fertilizers when we get to that early 1990s period. So we haven't talked very much about the economics of the DPRK yet, but can you take

us just briefly on a sweep, kind of an economic history of the DPRK from independence, those early quite successful years, and also its relations to the other socialist countries, the Soviet Union and China, and how those relations changed, particularly starting in the 70s, up until 1990 when, of course, the whole socialist system in the world was falling apart in many places and dramatically changing in others. So a brief sweep of the economic history as well as those relations with other socialist countries. Yeah, thank you, Harry. I also want to echo that I learned so much from Salvador's book and soil remains and understudied subject. In fact, Salvador sent me a letter after he saw the

article suggesting that we need to collect more, you know, data about the soil, soil types, crop types, and other nutrients in the soil based, you know, in the DPRK. I, you know, completely agree. Most of those data are not available, at least not available easily to us. But we're planning to, you know, doing some research activity to get more information from DPRK. Now we can travel to DPRK in person. I think that would be, and that might to facilitate this whole process. Sorry, one quick

flippant point, very flippant, but I'm, you know, I always have to throw in at least one flippant point per episode. You know, if you want if they want to meet a tag along on the trip to the DPRK more than happy to, I would happily try to collect

some documents with data, or I would also be happy to take along a shovel and just scoop up some soil samples from various parts of the country. Tomorrow I'm going out to the forest to go dig up some invasive species as part of one of the environmental organizations here in Kazan. I can take my shovel over to the DPRK. I'm sure that they'd be fine with that, right?

I'm sure. Anyway, sorry for that flippant interjection, but I did, you know, Kim, if you are listening, please. I have a shovel. It's ready. Anytime. Give me a call. I'm confident that you will be able to do that.

But, you know, the overall, economic system that we saw in the DPRK was, you know, it has, you know, it was a typical Soviet-type society in this rather, like, from this country with a much smaller population, much smaller territory, and not that much rich mineral resources available. But the country, like in a typical socialist country that they had free medical care, free education, and

everything, all the human development part was excellent in the DPRK. It measured by GDP, you know, this market economy measure, the DPRK in terms of per capita GDP, between

1950 and 1980, they grew by 4.5% every year. year. So that is, I think, a respectable growth rate, even by today's standards, because many developing countries couldn't do this. The 4.5 consistently would be great. It's much higher than United States. Obviously, they're at the different levels, but the RLK, the Republic Korea, South Korea, didn't have much higher growth rate. And that country received all this support from from the Western group, Western countries. And was hailed as an economic miracle after the, you know, the Korea, again, quote, unquote,

Korean war, despite receiving all of this Western aid, they were still seen as, and still are an economic miracle. Just, yeah, you know, think about, again, how these narratives work, listeners. These narratives are crucial to think about. Yeah. I think in terms of statistical evidence that we can find, the I.O.K, the South Korean side only, I think, stably exceeded the economic income in the DPRK, starting from the 1980s. And that was after very rapid growth. in the south for decades. And even that, you know, the differences between the north and south was not so great. It wasn't like today, you know, travel from south to the north,

you feel like, well, this is a different country. I think in terms of those major development indicators, a South Korean person wouldn't feel like he or she is going to a worse place when they travel to the northern side, if they can, in the 1970s and early 1980s. And DPRK, I think, went beyond many other socialist countries in terms of urbanization, because by 1987, more than half of the North Korean labor force was in industry. And that was a very high rate of industrialization, urbanization, because you, it was higher than the Soviet Union, it was higher than China, than it was higher than many other East European fairly industrialized states. So it really shows that the effort that DPRK put forward

in terms of industrialization and all this whole thing. So the country was fairly developed in the 1970s and 1980s. I mean in 1980s, the DPRK hosted this after the Olympic game in Seoul, in South Korea, Dibalki hosted this also big international game right after that in Pyong, which was also very successful. So, you know, it was not as wealthy maybe as South Korea in the 1980s, but it was still quite well to do, much better than China, for example,

in terms of income. And I think in the 1970s, the DPRK started to experiment different kinds of, I think, reforms that refers to that the efforts they had trying to engage with the Western financial markets. They tried to borrow money from the Western financial markets. And obviously, the money would go towards the National Development Project. and Japan and some other European countries, they were willing to let to DPRK, but that didn't end up well. The whole thing, the DPRK was not able to repay the money, which was typical about the developing countries.

And when they borrow money, later on they find it become very hot for them to actually pay. that debt plus interest. But even then, you know, the DPRK maintained all the major socialist elements in that society, you know, health care, education, and a fairly stable economic growth. The DPRK economy didn't grow very much after, like Soviet Union, like many socialist countries, after 1975, but the DPRK, its GDP still mostly was growing, you know, 2% every year. It was much slower than before. But considering that the country was doing so much everything else at the same time,

it was still a very impressive record for a, you know, a small economy. Yeah, and just to get back to the point then of how those relations between the DPRK the Soviet Union and China were, I think that you point out to some very interesting changes that took place in that mid-1970s period, mid-to-late 1970s period. And then again, of course, those changes continued up until 1990, 1991, and then kind of the entire bottom fell out at that point. So can you talk about the relations between those countries from, I guess, what were the relations like before the mid-70s, what changed in the mid-to-late 70s?

and then, you know, how were things developing as they got towards the collapse of the Soviet Union, at least? Right. Yeah. I think this is a really important question. I undercut the specific political dynamics among the, you know, socialist countries was very complicated. And obviously, the most divisive thing in this socialist bloc was the Sino-Sovieter. split. There's debate between the Chinese leadership and the Soviet leadership, starting from the late 1950s, you know, onwards, and that signal Soviet split obviously caused a lot of disruptions among the left globally.

The DPRK was right in between, you know, the two two. two countries. And both countries contributed greatly to the DPRK's, you know, the war, the revolution and the construction. So naturally, the DPRK didn't want to offend either one of them. But DPRK, because of this self-reliance, this orientation, it didn't for that a close relationship with the Soviet unit. That's my feeling regarding this relationship. It also had critiques on China, especially following, during the radical years that China was doing the cultural revolution. You have a, you know, the traditional communist party was severely challenged by the rebels all over the nation. And DPRK and China share the same board.

border. And they, you know, that's what it was concerning, I think, to the DPRK leadership that what would this turn into. So I think the DPRK tried to kept a good relationship with Soviet Union and China at the same time, try to keep a distance from the two countries, which are both much larger, more powerful than the DPRK. And I think, the DPRK leadership, you know, King Yassan and others, they were flexible enough to embrace Western credit in 1970s. That shows that they were thinking about something else, and they're just, that didn't work out very well. And we should mention that in the 1970s, it was also a period when the Soviet Union and United States had the didante and kind of normalizing. And

And China and the United States also had a normalizing of relationships in the early 1970s. And, you know, so all those socialist countries at the time were moving towards the West, you know, to different degrees. And but different from other countries, the DPRK's efforts of approaching the West, approaching the Western credit. didn't have concrete, tangible impacts on the DPRK economy. So that basically stopped after a while. I want to pick up two of the things that you had talked about earlier, which are kind of divergent,

but I want to put both of them out on the table. So I do apologize that these two questions are kind of unrelated, but they both came up in your previous answer before that last one. One was how despite all of these changes and despite some of the turbulence, especially around the fall of the, or the dismantling and the assault on the Soviet Union, the destruction of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the DPR case still maintained all of its, you know, socialist policies regarding health care, regarding education, and regarding something that you bring up early. on in the article, the egalitarian distribution of food. Now, this is something that some scholars have tried to blame for the famines to some degree in terms of the suffering and the starvation, this egalitarian distribution of food.

Something that you point out kind of misses the mark in terms of analyzing the egalitarian distribution of food and the policy surrounding that within the DPRK and its impact. So the first part of the question is going to be, can you talk a little bit about that, that distribution of food policy and how that operated vis-a-vis the starvation, the famine, the food shortages, how that operated within that context. And then the other thing that you mentioned, which again, I apologize that this is completely unrelated to that, but you had mentioned urbanization. and I want to make sure that we don't miss the opportunity to talk about how the urbanization of the country kind of shut off some of the transition mechanisms that could have been tried to carry out in the 1990s, something that you point out rather late in the article. So one of the things that you say, and again, I'm going to quote you here, I like quoting good

articles, and this is one. You said, a Chinese type of gradualist market transition in essence relies on a large potential reserve army in the countryside. Without a large potential reserve army, a market transition would have to create a reserve army among the existing workers. That is, the Soviet Union type of shock therapy. North Korea had, has had many years of successful industrialization and was already highly urbanized by the 1980s, since it did not have a considerable potential reserve army in the villages, the gradualist model was not viable. At the same time, suicidal shock therapy was a unique outcome at the end of the Soviet Union, and it would not be quite so persuasive to the North Korean working class or society

at large, given the disastrous consequences. So the second part of this question, which again, rather different, is can you talk a little bit about how that urbanization of the working class within the DPRK shut off that gradualist possibility towards marketization, you know, from a kind of political economic standpoint and how that then only leaves that shock therapy type transition that was the Soviet, you know, the end of the Soviet Union experience, which, as we've talked about on the show before, and as I'm sure the listeners are quite aware, was absolutely devastating to the Soviet states. Yes. Thank you for mentioning those two, I think, related, very related points.

First, I'll just mention something about the food distribution in the DPRK. there are like again I think this is a typical socialist policy that food is a right not something you know you're going to purchase depending on how much money you have so they have the so-called public distribution system the PDS that guaranteed everyone a certain amount of food. So if the socialist government has more food to distribute, then the per capita quota, the ration would be higher. And you can basically with this little coupon or some kind of certificate, you will be able to purchase food at a very affordable price. Those are a planning price that from basically the state market or from kind of a food distribution center.

So that's how the PDS would supposedly work. And that, you know, when the economy was doing fine, the PDS works also fine. It guarantees everyone a reasonable amount of food. But any kind of this, you know, this institution design would not be able to create food. It's just a way of better distributing food. So in the 1990s, when the DPRK had a real food shortage, the serial output declined by 80%, you know, more than 80% in a short two, three years, there's no way you can save this, really.

It's that the PDS collapsed, I think, during those years. It's just so much, so little that you can get from the state system, from the distribution system. So, you know, as you can imagine, the black market and all those other ways of smuggling and would emerge because people have to find food, and they couldn't get, they would get very minimal from the official distribution system, their mechanism. But I think that, you know, the system would work fine if the socialist state could actually control and distribute a reasonable amount of food. Like, you know, today the DPRK still have the

PDS. The amount of food that's allocated to every person through PDRS is fairly, even though a lot of food. So they would have to compensate, I think, with some kind of market exchange, market food. But with that base, it's like a universal basic income, like the Western audience like to talk about. And that is helpful in all kinds of ways. And if the economy is doing better where to improve in the future, then you don't have increasingly, you don't have to buy as much from the market. And, you know, so the nutritional problem, the whole food shortage problem would not be much a concern under the PDS, given a reasonable national food supply. So that's, I think that's, you know, a very big, important legacy from the socialist, you know,

the institutions. Obviously, as you mentioned, that the second question related is that why the DPRK government just didn't get rid of the PDS? Or they, why didn't they just like some of the Union and China and many other socialist, former social countries, they would embrace the market economy. Why do they maintain very much a traditional Soviet type social institutions? I think this does have something to do with the level of development in all those 20th century socialist societies. We have to realize that. The transition away from the planning system, from this traditional Soviet-type socialism, is not an easy thing. Although, you know, living through the 1980s, 90s, it almost like the mainstream media made us think that, oh, that's natural, because market is a natural thing.

But it's not natural. It has to be imposed by force, by someone who is going to benefit from the market. that's going to impose the market on you. And so it really depends on who is going to benefit from the market reform and who is not. In the Soviet Union, even approach the end years, and the Soviet ordinary citizens, workers, they have all kinds of fantasies regarding capitalism because they never lived in one. They look at the Western economy with envy, with this, oh, I wish I would live in those kind of societies. I have unlimited supply of commodities, and everyone will get lots of money, get rich.

But if you obviously ask them, oh, well, so you might have a chance of getting rich under capitalism, if you end up in that 1%, but the workers would never have guaranteed jobs. You're going to have huge trouble with medical care and education and all the other things and housing. Would you be willing to trade for that? Obviously, the Soviet workers would say no. I mean, that was the general message from all those surveys before the end of the Soviet Union that the people there

but didn't want to embrace the unsettled capitalism. They want to keep the jobs. They don't want to lose jobs like many of them did. So, yes, but the market economy, the whole logical capital, they have to be based on some kind of, you cannot be just carrots. It has to be accompanied by sticks. Otherwise, the whole market system wouldn't work. So, yes, I'll give you the carrots.

You give you whatever flexibility, freedom, but then you have to accept the fact that many of you will be unemployed from day one. And the workers would obviously be against it, I mean, from the class interest, whether they realize it or not, they wouldn't like that kind of thing. So the market transition in the former social society would have to be imposed by force in the end. You can cheat. You can basically trick the workers. I mean, that's what they did in Soviet Union and many other places. It's a trick. Everyone would be happy. But they're not, right? And that's kind of a tricking and the cheating. But they, but was the workers wanted to have something else, then, you know, the Russian elites have all this force waiting for them. So that, you know, they have, so it's a coercive process. In a country like China, you know, you still have a Communist Party in power, and they didn't give up all the things in the country, despite this very dramatic social economic changes. They, you know, because China was, you know, in 1980s, most of the population was still in the countryside. The other workers who were, I think, the strongest opponent to, and

any market reforms, well, not that many. So the Chinese leadership didn't deal with the, they didn't have to deal with the urban workers at the beginning. Rather, they can wait after they dealt with the rural workers, the peasants, the farmers, they dismantle the communes and so-called liberated billions of labor force to the urban areas, so that those people eventually become the basis

of the new private economy. So you can do this. I mean, this is a gradual approach. But the gradual approach doesn't mean that it doesn't have coercive component. It also had, you know, those forceful moment because you have to dismantle the rural collectives. And, you know, eventually in the 1990s, the Chinese leadership still dismantled many state-old factories,

laid off millions of workers. So that happened later. It made the whole overall transition a much smoother process. But in the country like DPRK, if the DPRK wants to follow either of the past, it would find itself in this very much constrained condition. Because although most of the people in the country have already moved to the urban areas, you don't have a sizable rural sector. to exploit. You cannot just liberate all those, let's say, farmers, peasants,

then they can become competitive with the urban workers. And that just wasn't available to the North Korean government. They can also try to do the Soviet-type shock therapy, which was basically doing a coercive method against the massive urban working class. But it turns out that the shock therapy that we saw, the 1980s, early 1990s, was really, I think, in retrospect, a accidental thing. You know, it's not always clear that how the socialist government or, let's say, elites in a socialist country, they might want to, they can do this. because it's a particular time in the 1980s that the ideological, political, economic conditions were there,

then they can do it in one stroke. But even a few years later, and you will look back, you realize that there are many other possibilities that the shock therapy might not work out or might not be adopted. In the D.P.R.K., for example, the first generation revolutionary leader, King Nia's son, was still alive during the demise of the Soviet Union. And it would normally, it doesn't happen with the first generation Communist Party leader that they would destroy something they built by themselves.

you know, that's not, even if, let's say, even if Kenya's son has, didn't have much faith in the Soviet socialist system, but to destroy something you build by himself, it's quite a different thing. And clearly from his writing, he was very critical of the developments in the Soviet Union. And so, you know, there is no Khrushchev, there is no garbage shop particular in the DPRK to do it. I think that was, you know, you have the historical contingency there in the DPRK. And the DPRK always faced this severe blockade from the West for the United States particular. I mean, it's a different situation in the Soviet Union, where the Soviet Union leads all when I want to be part of Europe. But, you know, DPRT, I mean, all the elites, let's say, they really want to embrace capitalism.

They realize that this, they're not, it's not likely they're going to benefit much from this. Because once they really, let's say, embrace capitalism, eventually they're going to unify with South Korea. And the South Korean monopolies are, you know, going to take over them in one day. So it's unlike, I mean, so the benefits, the revenues or whatever the potential payouts from this transition is not clear to the North Korean elites. Plus, you know, they have this strong opposition, potential political opposition from the urban working class in the DPRK. So that's why I would argue that the DPRK system, which was, you know, is this. a very typical Soviet economic system was able to sustain, despite all those sanctions or the blockade and the hot ships. I mean, the more hardship they have, probably there would be more

willing to keep the Soviet system, because that's how they can survive, really. So that's my, very briefly, some of my thoughts on the two questions. Oh, no, that was absolutely marvelous. I do want to be respectful of your time, but I've got two questions left for you. So, you know, feel free to be as brief or as expansive as you would like, but I do have two questions left for you. The first question I have for you is, again, turning back towards the question of crop fields and fertilizer usage. So you put in some really terrific graphs in this article, which I highly recommend the listeners to check out. So go into the show notes, check out the article, if for nothing else, and to see these graphs that will accompany this next question.

But you should also read the entire article. But what you really show within these graphs and keeping in mind that the data is rather sparse in terms of what we're able to collect from the DPRK, as you had previously laid out, and I know as Salvatore has pointed out to both of us, one of the things that is very clear to see is that because of the geographic constraints and the way that then the agricultural policy was developed over generations within the DPRK and this heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers, when chemical fertilizers became not as easy for them to get into the country. What we see is an absolute falling out of the floor in terms of crop yields within the country. So can you talk a little bit about how crop yields were going up until

1993, which I think is a very interesting case? And then what happened after 1993 up to today, both in terms of chemical fertilizer usage and crop yields and how those two things are, I mean, pretty much directly linked. Again, the graphs that you share are very quite striking in this regard. Oh, yeah, thank you for the question. I think that the direct relationship between a particular kind of input, like a fertilizer or some kind of fertilizer, and the agricultural yields or the overall output, that has to be, if we want to do it properly, we have to estimate it very carefully with detailed data. I think what the data present in the article, at least it shows that there is some broad,

you know, as co-movement of the two variables, the two things, fertilizer, and they cross. And it's given that the DPRT prior to the 1990s has already developed a very, very chemical-intensive agriculture, or the modern agriculture, any reduction of the chemical inputs would likely bring a direct blow to the food output that was at least that's consistent what we saw with the data. that it doesn't matter how you measure it, actually. You know, the fertilizer, it had a huge drop after 1993. And so went the food output. So I think there was a direct causal relationship between the two. And when you have, for example, when you have less, we are basically cut off from the oil,

inputs, that you don't have the capacity. Even though they have the factory, they cannot produce chemical fertilizers. And they don't have the oils, they cannot really run the agricultural machineries or any other kind of thing that's based on fossil fuels. So it became very hard for them to operate the basic infrastructure they have built over the decades. even though you can imagine a very extensive infrastructure, very well maintained. But if you don't have those inputs that none of that would run, I think that was really a kind of shock therapy movement, not intentionally, but it was a forced shock therapy, that suddenly you don't have a key ingredient in your recipe,

and you just couldn't make the dish. And to the DPRK, this was devastating. As I mentioned, that they have been relying on the oil supply from both Soviet Union and China. And both, well, Russia, later on Russia, Russia and China. But then, you know, Soviet Union and Russia then demanded payments in cash in international currency, which the DPRK obviously didn't have. It was blocked from the international market. And also after that, and the Chinese side also demanded the same thing.

Yeah, you know, the whole collapse of this kind of socialist trading network for a small economy like the DPRK, which has been relying on those inputs, was a, you know, this is the worst news that they can hope for. And so I think there was, they did what they could, I think, based on, you know, this. But the oil input or the chemical fertilizer application never quite recovered after 1990s. It was, it remained in that very low level because the country still faced the blockades. It still doesn't have the international currency to buy all those other inputs from, you know, international market. And every once in a while, you would read like this high-tech article in New York Times that,

oh, we spot this ship that's probably shipping oil or something to the DPRK, and they would identify this ship belongs to China or belong to some other places. And, you know, it's just so they have the under 24 cents. in getting any inputs from foreign countries. So it would be very hard for them. Even so, I think that what we can tell is that the DPRK managed to increase food output based on fairly limited fertilizer input in the last since 1990, more than 20 years. I think that must mean that they have learned to work with the

this shortage of fossil fuels. And probably they would do something that's free from fossil fuels, relying more on ecological agriculture, relying on other kinds of techniques. So those are possible. We don't know the details, but that's something we can guess from the data. And that's something that I would absolutely love to be able to know more details on, especially again with this upcoming book talking about the agri-ecological history of Cuba and the Soviet Union, it's very interesting in both cases talking about having an

agricultural policy that is not based on chemical fertilizers. In the case of Cuba, that is made for largely two reasons. One is that, again, using chemical fertilizers is a petroleum-heavy, you know, input-heavy decision. And Cuba famously does not have an overabundance of petroleum, and as well as they do have, you know, stated quite clearly their environmental and ecological aims. And so in that regard, Cuba has a history of creating an agricultural policy that is not based on chemical fertilizer. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, and this is something that we talked about, I mentioned earlier in the conversation, I know I talked about it, more extensively off the record with you before. But under the Stalin administration, what we saw is that actually much of the agricultural policy, which we were seeing increases in the yields,

the productive yields of the agricultural sector, those inputs were not chemical inputs. They were biological fixes more so than they were chemical fixes, which is super interesting. thing. And we see that dramatic shift, as I mentioned earlier, when Hhrushchev comes in almost immediately, it switches to being a very chemical, heavy focus on the agricultural sector. Now, talking about the DPRK, it's really interesting that, as you mentioned, we see this linkage between chemical fertilizer usage and agricultural yields. And then we see when the chemical fertilizer stops coming in, we see this completely drop, you know, catastrophic drop in agricultural yields. But while the amount of chemical fertilizer that is being used is still very low today, we have seen an upswing

a little bit. You know, it does vary a little bit based on the year. But overall, the trend is upwards in agricultural yield, despite the fact that they're not having an increase in chemical fertilizer usage, which, you know, I wish that there was more available in terms of how that is possible, what the agricultural policies, whether they're using more biologic fixes, you know, what is going on? I wish that we had that information and hopefully as more information comes out. And hopefully, you know, when you go with your pencil and pad and I go with my shovel to the DPRK, we're able to get, you know, some of the more answers to that question. Yes, I want to mention that a recent article that I've read by Erica Young from the de-growth NYC collective. She is doing organ research. And the article that I read from Burr dealt with this agroacology in the DPRK. And, you know, she reviewed the existing literature on some of the agro-ecological practices.

developed in the DPRP in the last few decades. Some of them, you know, even though it was secondary certain sources, they look plausible to me. I mean, the practices that she described, that basically you increase, you use human, you are able to replace a lot of chemical inputs. I mean, it's theoretically possible. And I would argue that that is in the future,

if we want to have a sustainable agriculture, and that's something that we need to do. Instead of destroying the countryside, we need to build a vibrant countryside with people. I mean, if we don't use fossil fuels, that the labor productivity wouldn't be high. It means that we have to do the same kind of work. We will have to till the land to a certain extent.

We're not going to sit in a comfortable chair ordering a tractor to do that. And we might have to do it via ourselves to save the Earth to avoid using fossil fuels and other considerations. So I think some manual labor, some physical labor, are still needed, remain very important, I think, in future countryside. But that's something that a future socialist effort program would have to take that into consideration in the light of the lessons from the DPRK and other socialist countries. Yeah, it's really fast. I haven't seen that specific article. If you could send it to me, I'd love to check it out and also I'll include it in the show notes for other listeners who are interested as well. hopefully there's at least a few of you who are and perhaps we'll be able to talk about that piece

in the future but I do like I said I do I have a lot more questions that I could ask I could talk about the DPRK and agriculture all day these are two interests of mine that are coming together so you know I really could talk about this all day but I will be respectful of your time again particularly keeping in mind that we had a 50 minute conversation off the record before we even hit record so and also keeping in mind that you're going to be back on the show again soon the final question it's going to be kind of a survey and honestly we could have opened the conversation with this but i thought holding it for the end would be a nice way to wrap up it goes back to actually the title of the article industrial agriculture lessons from north korea

the question is simply what are the lessons that we can draw from the experience of north korea vis-vis their industrial agricultural history yes um again And thank you very much for the question. This is wrapping up what we have discussed in this discussion. I think we have learned, I mean, as socialists, we can learn a lot from all the previous socialist projects. And the DPRK, I think, offered a very unique perspective to this. because really it showed that for a small economy, for a small country, and with all this strong, you know, this capitalist enemies,

and you know, the fossil fuel is not a reliable friend. And that's something that we can really draw from the North Korean case, that, you know, unless you happen to have rich, mineral resources, oil resources. And okay, you know, at least geopolitically speaking, you can survive for a while. But for most other countries that they don't have this much oil resource, that, you know, we have to think about very carefully what kind of society, what kind of economic system we're going to build. It's not just about, like, giving a very egalitarian distribution of food to everyone. But also how do we produce the food? And we cannot replicate,

let's say, the American style farming, agriculture that was really unique, has huge amount of chemical inputs, large farms, big mechanization. And that turns out it didn't work very well for DPRK, even if it worked for several decades very well, but eventually it collapsed. And I think that's something, it's a disaster scenario, it's something that we all need to keep in mind that, yes, it could happen. Even if it really didn't, nothing wrong, you know, let's say from American agricultural perspective, DPRK was a model. It was a model replicated in small economy, but still it, you know, had run into so much difficulties and people had so much suffering because of this. So I think, too, this future social project, learning the lessons

from the DPRK from North Korea, is that we have to, from the very beginning, we have to do agricultural, ecological farming. We have to uphold the ecological principles. We need to steadily move away from fossil fields from the very beginning. And that is, that's, even though, you might not have this miracle, wonderful, you know, agricultural achievements in the first 10, 20 years. But in the long run, I think it would turn out to be better for all the people there. So I think that's, you know, kind of the lesson we can learn. And the other thing is regarding industrialization, urbanization, you know, it's not ideal, I think, to move everyone away from the countryside, to kill the countryside. A future better society, like Marx mentioned

that we need to have end the division between country and town. And we, you know, it's not like everyone should move away from agriculture. I think a huge amount of people who still need to work in agriculture based on ecological principles. What the socialist economy, society can do is to change the value system to get rid of the capitalist law of value. So that it doesn't matter

where you work, you're working agriculture, you're working some kind of banks, working in some kind of a high-tech firm, you get very egalitarian returns. So that's, you know, so basically you value your product

on a socialist basis, not on capitalist market, not on capitalist market principles, I think that's something we can do. And that would, I think, effectively end the division of material, metal, and town and country, those important divisions. And I think that's also in principle what socialism should entail. Absolutely terrific. Again, listeners, the article that we have been discussing is industrial agriculture lessons from North Korea, which was recently published in monthly review. check the show notes and you'll be able to get a link to that article.

Our guest, once again, rejoining us is Zhu, who is an associate professor at John Jay College in the Graduate Center, City University of New York, an author of the book, which again, we will be talking about in an episode very soon, from commune to capitalism, how China's peasants lost collective farming and gained urban poverty. Juan, it's been great having you back on the show. I hope that you enjoyed the conversation. I do apologize for holding you as long as I did. Captive, prisoner, whatever you want to call it.

But I had a great time. Can you tell the listeners if there's anywhere that you would like to direct them to, whether it's to your book or if you have anywhere that they can keep up to date with the latest work that you're putting out? Thank you, Harry. It's been a great experience. I always enjoyed our conversation. It's great to be back at the program.

I think for people who are interested in learning more, I mean, like me, I mean, we're really looking forward to the book. You and Salvadori would produce. And, you know, that's something that I look forward to reading. And from the way that you describe it, I think that would really change our conception regarding Soviet Union and, you know, all those agricultural stuff in socialism. So that's something I would love to read and recommend everyone to try to check it out. Yeah, well, I'll get you an early copy of it for sure. It'll be no problem. All right, listeners, my co-host Adnan Hussein was unable to make it to this conversation,

but he will be back for the next conversation as well as the next conversation that we have with Chuan, which, as I said, will be very soon. You should follow Adnan on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain. That's H-U-S-A-I-N. and be sure to subscribe to his other podcast, The M-A-J-L-I-S, which is focused on the Middle East Islamic World and Muslim Diaspora issues. I know that they have another episode that they're going to be dropping around the time that this episode comes out. So if you aren't subscribed already, it's a great time to do so. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at H-H-U-C-1-995.

Again, stay tuned to IskraBooks.org. Sign up to the newsletter. you'll get updates about all of the books that we put out at iskra and just a reminder all of the books that come out from iskra have a free pdf available of them you can buy the actual physical book or just download it so iscrabbooks.org uh where that upcoming book on the agro ecological history of cuba and the soviet union will be coming out you can help support the show allow us to continue making episodes like this patreon.com forward slash gorilla history that's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history, and you can follow the show on Twitter to keep up to date with

everything that the show was putting out, as well as what Adnan and I are doing individually at Gorilla underscore pod. Again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-Sore pod. And until next time, listeners, Solidarity. You know, So, Thank you.