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Menghean Socialist Party 대멩 사회당 / 大孟社會黨 Dae Meng Sahoedang | |
|---|---|
 | |
| General-Secretary | Choe Sŭng-min |
| Vice Secretary | Gang Hyŏn-wu |
| Founded | 1 May 1988 |
| Headquarters | 512 Donggwangsan road, Donggyong |
| Newspaper | Dangjung Sinmun |
| Youth wing | Youth Vanguard Joguk Janyŏ |
| Membership (2016) | 67.29 million |
| Ideology | Choe Sŭng-min Thought State Socialism Menghean Nationalism Economic Nationalism |
| Religion | secular |
| National affiliation | All-Citizens' Front for National Development |
| Colors | azure gold |
| Slogan | 당중앙 따라서 영원히 한길을 가리라 "The Party Center will Follow this Road Forever" |
| National Assembly | 189 / 278
|
| Supreme Council of Menghe | 23 / 25
|
| Party flag | |
 | |
| Website | |
| english.dangjung.mh | |
The Menghean Socialist Party, sometimes abbreviated in English-language literature as MSP, is the ruling political party of the Socialist Republic of Menghe. Officially, it rules in coalition with the Menghean Social-Democratic Party and Menghean Workers' Party as part of the All-Citizens' Front for National Development; but in practice these are puppet organizations with little independent power, such that Menghe functions as a one-party state. The current General-Secretary of the Party is Choe Sŭng-min, who also holds the positions of Chairman of the Supreme Council and Supreme Marshal of the Armed Forces.
Officially, the Menghean Socialist Party is committed to the ideology of State Socialism, and maintains that the state should control the means of production. In practice, however, it has pursued a more pragmatic policy, legalizing private enterprise and corporatizing state-owned enterprises through the creation of Jachi-hoesa. The Menghean Socialist Party has defined these policies as "Meritocratic Socialism," and later as a "Socialist market economy." It has openly rejected some principles of Marxism-Leninism, such as class conflict, and does not aim to eventually establish a Communist society. Many consider its policy positions to be closer to corporatism and nationalism than Marxism-Leninism.
History
Transitional Period (1988-1992)
The early history of the Menghean Socialist Party was rooted in a factional split within the Menghean People's Communist Party. One group, the "progress faction" formerly led by Sim Jin-hwan, favored large-scale industrialization and high modernism, while its rival "populist faction" under Ryŏ Ho-jun demanded immediate collectivization and worker leadership. As Ryŏ Ho-jun's disastrous leadership had provoked the Decembrist Revolution, the post-coup Interim Council for National Restoration made an immediate goal of excluding them from politics by disbanding the Communist Party altogether and replacing it with direct military administration.
Yet without a single-party structure, the junta struggled to hold together the state apparatus, and it soon became clear that in the long term they would need a dominant party of their own. The resulting Menghean Socialist Party was officially established on May 1st, 1988, three weeks before the government of the Menghean Socialist Republic was formed. Its early ranks were staffed by a combination of military personnel and "progress faction" Communists, many of whom had been rehabilitated after facing persecution in Ryŏ's Perpetual Revolution. The Party's first General-Secretary was Go Hae-wŏn, but his power was checked by the Supreme Council, on which he was only a Deputy Chairman.
Although the Menghean People's Communist Party had been formally disbanded after the Decembrist Revolution, its ex-members constituted a majority of lower-level political officials, many of whom remained loyal to Communist ideals. At the same time, the Supreme Council had justified its takeover on the basis that major reforms would be necessary in order to solve Menghe's economic problems. The general population was also divided, with urban areas more supportive of Communism for its stable industrial employment while rural areas remained resentful after the Famine of 1985-1987.
Caught between these two extremes, the new Socialist Party leadership tried to please both sides, with some success. Following Choe Sŭng-min's example, it adopted "Meritocratic Socialism" into the Party platform, holding that inequality is justified as long as it matches workers' contributions to economic development and that managers and government officials should be judged based on their performance at stimulating economic growth. At the same time, however, it dragged its feet in putting these policies into practice, and allowed many local officials to continue ruling as they had before.
Reformist Period (1992-present)
On July 23rd, 1992, Go Hae-wŏn resigned from the post of General-Secretary, citing poor health and a desire to retire to the countryside. It appears that he did so under pressure from the Supreme Council, which had grown frustrated with his lackluster support for reforms. In an emergency session, the Party Central Committee voted unanimously to confirm Choe Sŭng-min as the new General-Secretary of the Party, once again under pressure from the Supreme Council and the Military.
Once in office, General-Secretary Choe began a steady purge of the Party, arresting or expelling members who were suspected of harboring loyalties to Ryŏ Ho-jun and his populist approach to communism. Unlike other political purges, this one was gradually rolled out over the course of several years, and was carefully targeted to avoid falsely accusing coup supporters. It was also largely limited to the middle ranks of government, as the upper ranks had been filled by trusted officials in the interim period and the lower ranks could simply be intimidated into complicity. The purge lasted two years, and by its end Choe had fully consolidated his power as the Party's political and ideological leader.
With this obstacle to reform lifted, the Menghean Socialist Party was able to make deeper changes to its ideology, shifting toward its current position over the course of the decades that followed. By pushing through the 1998 National Law on Enterprise Restructuring, the Party endorsed the formation of private businesses and the corporatization of state-owned enterprises, strategies which had enjoyed only tacit support before then. In a 2003 speech, General-Secretary Choe formally replaced the slogan of Meritocratic Socialism with the Socialist market economy, a step which would have been unthinkable in the immediate wake of the Decembrist Revolution.
The new Party also took some steps in the direction of political liberalization, allowing the Menghean Social-Democratic Party and the Menghean Workers' Party to run candidates in the 1999 legislative elections and tolerating more intra-Party competition in the nomination process. In the 2014 election, it won only 392 seats in the National Assembly, leaving almost a third for the other parties. Nevertheless, the MSP did not loosen its real control over the political system, and in some respects has taken on a more authoritarian slant during this period.
Organization
National Congress
Every five years, the National Congress of the Menghean Socialist Party convenes in Donggyŏng to elect the Central Committee, amend the Party Constitution, and decide on the direction and policy of the Party. Many of these issues are decided beforehand by the previous Central Committee, so the Congress vote serves primarily as a rubber stamp to certify them as Party law. The most recent National Congress, held in 2013, involved 956 voting delegates representing over 65 million Party members across the country. After it has ratified all necessary decisions, the National Congress dissolves, to convene again five years later.
Central Committee
In the time between National Congresses, decision-making is handled by the Central Committee of the Menghean Socialist Party. It has 153 full members, most of whom also serve as provincial and ministerial officials, and 67 alternate members. The Central Committee holds Plenary Sessions every year, in which it debates routine issues in Party policy and Party ideology. The Central Committee also elects the General-Secretary of the Party and the four other members of the Central Standing Committee.
Central Standing Committee
The Central Standing Committee consists of seven members and meets roughly once a week to discuss Party policies and strategies for their implementation. It is the highest body in the Menghean Socialist Party, and the only one that meets continuously rather than every year or every five years. It is equivalent to a Politburo in many other Communist and Socialist Parties, serving as the highest center of power within the Party. Under the current Party Constitution, it is possible for the Central Committee to overrule the Central Standing Committee with a two-thirds majority, but this has rarely happened in practice and most Central Committee votes are decided ahead of time by the Standing Committee.
In Menghe, the Central Standing Committee is not considered the highest organ of state, and is subordinate to the Supreme Council. This distinguishes Menghe from many other Communist and Socialist countries, in which the Politburo is tasked with implementing Party decisions. Theoretically, the Central Committee and the Central Standing Committee are tasked with shaping Party ideology and managing Party affairs, while the Supreme Council is tasked with making policy decisions and governing the country, a pattern replicated at other levels of administration. In practice, however, it is difficult to tell where one body's power ends and another's begins. Currently, six members of the Central Standing Committee (including the General-Secretary of the Party) also serve on the Supreme Council, while 23 out of 25 Supreme Council members are affiliated with the Menghean Socialist Party.
General-Secretary
The General-Secretary of the Party is the highest office within the Menghean Socialist Party, and one of the three highest offices in the country as a whole. The General-Secretary presides over the Central Committee and the Central Standing Committee, and sets the tone for changes in Party ideology. The General-Secretary is elected by the Central Committee every five years, but there is no limit on the number of terms one person can hold, and since 1992 Choe Sŭng-min has run unopposed and won each re-election with a unanimous vote.
Because Menghe is for all intents and purposes a one-party state, the General-Secretary is highly influential in setting national policy. Yet here, too, it is difficult to separate Party from State authority, as Choe Sŭng-min simultaneously holds the position of Chairman of the Supreme Council and has implemented most of his policies through the latter post.
Central Discipline Inspection Committee
The CDIC was first established in 1992 as part of Choe Sŭng-min's effort to screen apart threatening and non-threatening Communist Party loyalists. Since then, it has evolved into the main body for maintaining ideological discipline and ideological consistency within the Party, ensuring that lower-level members stay true to central interpretations of Socialist doctrine. It is one of three major anti-corruption bodies in Menghe, the other two being the General-Directorate for Discipline Inspection and the Internal Political Directorate of the Internal Intelligence Agency. This high degree of redundancy is intended to make it harder for any one clique or interest group to capture the entire anti-corruption apparatus.
By law, Menghe's Military Discipline Inspection Force (or Gunchal) is subordinate to the Party's Central Discipline Inspection Committee, though it also has a dual command structure which reports to the military. Similarly, the CDIC has legal influence over Menghe's Internal Security Forces, even though these are directly subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Security. Choe Sŭng-min engineered this structure in the 1990s, in order to extend Party oversight into the military and police forces.
Other party agencies
In addition to the main bodies above, the Menghean Socialist Party contains a number of smaller agencies, which together form the Party Apparatus. These are subordinate to the General Office, and their members are elected by the Central Commission for a term of five years (usually between National Congresses). As of 2017, there were ten major departments in the Party apparatus:
- Personnel Department
- Party Finance Department
- Historical and Ideological Research Department
- Policy Research and Formulation Department
- Consultation Department of the Inter-Party Coalition
- Propaganda and Media Department
- Socialist Education Department
- Cultural Department
- International Party Relations Department
- History and Archives Department
Youth wing
The youth wing of the Menghean Socialist Party is the Youth Vanguard, or Chŏngsonyŏn Sŏnbongdae (청소년 선봉대). This serves as a replacement for the Red Guards of the Revolution, which were run by the Menghean People's Communist Party. Its children's wing is the Joguk Janyŏ, or "Sons and Daughters of the Homeland", for those between the ages of 5 and 14.
The Youth Vanguard's organization mirrors that of the Socialist Party, with a National Congress, a Central Committee, and a Central Standing Committee, but these work under the guidance of the Socialist Party leadership and serve mainly as sites for training.
In addition to their political duty, of introducing the next generation to the Socialist Party's values, the Youth Vanguard and Joguk Janyŏ serve as important sites for instilling discipline and nationalism. The Youth Vanguard hold annual "military preparation weeks," which introduce members to military duties in preparation for their compulsory military service. Both organizations are also important in reinforcing the personality cult of Choe Sŭng-min and connecting Socialist ideology with a glorified narrative of Menghean history.
Lower-level organization
Each administrative division of Menghe has its own Party committees, which are elected by local Party congresses and report to the party committee at the next-highest level. As at the national level, these Party organizations do not have direct authority over implementing policy, and mainly serve to maintain ideological coherence from the Central Committee downward. Local Disciplinary Inspection Committees are elected by local Party congresses but are directly overseen by the CDIC, and serve as an important tool for fighting corruption at the local level.
In 2016, the Menghean Socialist Party had 67.29 million members, or slightly over 12.8% of the national population. Party members are expected to show higher loyalty to the Socialist Party and the national leadership, and to exercise discipline and unity in their personal lives, but they also gain certain privileges. Foremost among these is the right to submit petitions and "letters of constructive criticism" to the local Party leadership, a process which is faster and more effective than writing petitions through the state structure. Party members can also attend local Party meetings, have better access to Party speeches and documents, and gain access to a personal network that assists in finding a stable political or economic career.
Membership is open to anyone over the age of 18, but members must undergo a review process which tests their past ideological loyalty to the regime. This review process is carried out by local Party organizations, but is based on standards set by the Central Committee, and draws on personal records taken by the education system, the Youth Vanguard, and the Gunchal for ex-soldiers. Male citizens who registered for an exemption from compulsory service have a reduced likelihood of being accepted, and citizens who were not members of the Youth Vanguard are almost always turned down.
In the last five to ten years, restrictions on Party membership have become somewhat more relaxed, allowing more citizens to join the Party. As early as 1998, Choe Sŭng-min had formally opened Party membership to entrepreneurs and private business-owners, and Party membership is today more common among the middle and upper classes than among industrial and agricultural workers. This approach of integration and co-optation has been cited as a major source of the Socialist regime's endurance in the 21st century.
Ideology
Socialism
Officially, the MSP claims to adhere to State Socialism, but since 1993 it has made several departures from Marxism-Leninism. In one of his first public speeches as General-Secretary, Choe Sŭng-min explicitly rejected the notion of class struggle, instead stressing that citizens of all class backgrounds must work together for the benefit of the nation and that all must share in the gains from economic progress. Choe justified many of his early reforms on the basis that it was necessary to first reach a high standard of living and instill social solidarity before achieving a true Communist society, but since 2008 Party speeches and documents have made no mention of this goal. Left-wing critics of the Menghean government, most notably those in Maverica and the People's Republic of Innominada, have used these changes to accuse the Menghean Socialist Party of revisionism.
From the turn of the millennium onward, many scholars of comparative politics have interpreted the Menghean Socialist Party's ideology as a form of corporatism or corporate nationalism rather than Socialism proper. A few scholars have even contended that the Menghean term for Socialism, Sahoejuyi (사회주의 / 社會主義) is better understood as "Society-ism." This ideological turn preserves many features of State Socialism, including obedience to authority and a central role for the state in economic planning, but does so while justifying the existence of a hierarchical order in which labor and capital cooperate in the name of economic development.
Economics
The Menghean Socialist Party treats economic development as the primary goal of the regime, second only to national security and domestic stability. From the late 1990s onward, it has promoted the phrase "Build Up the Country" (Joguk-ŭl Gaebalhae) as a national slogan, cultivating a form of economic nationalism in which it is every citizen's duty to promote economic growth. This, in turn, alludes to the Greater Menghean Empire slogan of Buguk Gangbyŏng, roughly translated as "Enrich the Country, Strengthen the Military." Choe Sŭng-min was particularly influential in shaping this turn toward developmentalism, treating it as the only way to escape the famines of the 1980s and protect Menghe's military interests.
As part of its developmental ideology, the MSP adopted a pragmatic approach to economic policy, and has shown a remarkable willingness to skirt around Socialist values in the name of promoting growth. Choe later justified this turn on the basis that "it does not matter if a citizen is Red or White, what matters is that he is not hungry." In recent years especially, the Socialist Party has openly promoted the formation of private businesses and the privatization of some remaining state-owned enterprises. The Party does, however, demand that the state be given a central role in managing economic growth, even if this is done through partnerships with Jachi-hoesa rather than fixed production targets.
Nationalism
Outside the economic realm, the Menghean Socialist Party has also seen a rise in conventional Menghean nationalism, which the previous Menghean People's Communist Party had spurned as a distraction from class ideology. It often backs up its economic and social policies through references to "Menghean values," such as diligence, frugality, and selflessness. While the Party is officially secular, tolerating all major religions in the country, in recent years it has promoted Chŏndoism as a tradition which legitimates its authority, leading some critics to accuse the Party of fostering a state religion. Socialist Party traditionalism is also visible in the personality cult of Choe Sŭng-min, who has used state propaganda to model himself after past Menghean emperors. Of particular note are the Party's references to the Ŭi Dynasty, which is considered a golden age in Menghean history.
These comparisons are often intended to lend legitimacy to the authoritarian Menghean regime and motivate opposition to what the Party identifies as "Western imperialism." In this vein, the Socialist Party has gone so far as to glorify the Greater Menghean Empire's aggressive expansionism in the Great Conquest War (1935-1944) and whitewash its involvement in war crimes during that conflict.
Notably, in spite of these appeals the Menghean Socialist Party still refrains from openly embracing ethnic nationalism. This reluctance mainly stems from the need to include the Uzeri, Argent, Daryz, and Siyadagi minorities, which are concentrated in the southwest. To this end, the Party has sought to build a Menghean civic identity which unites minority groups with the ethnic Meng majority. Its party platform includes a denunciation of Shahidiphobic and anti-Uzeri speech, placing them on par with secessionist agitation as a threat to the country. Choe Sŭng-min reportedly played an especially important role in shaping and maintaining this stance, though some skeptics suggest his actual role is exaggerated in government propaganda so that Uzeris upset with Menghean rule remain sympathetic to the central leadership.
Symbols
The symbol of the Menghean Socialist Party, which is featured on both the Party flag and the Party emblem, consists of a modified hammer and sickle crossed with a calligraphy brush inscribed in the center of a circle. This is meant to symbolize the unity of farmers, the working class, and the intelligentsia. The brush also alludes to Menghean traditions, namely the scholar-gentry celebrated in Yuhak philosophy.
In contrast to many other Socialist parties, its colors are azure and gold rather than red and gold. This is another reference to Menghean traditions, in which azure, the color of Heaven, was associated with the Emperor, the ideal of justice, and the principle of ruling through virtue.