Korean Capitalism & Prussian Socialism

South Korean teens in Jongno, Seoul. (Photo courtesy of Flickr)

3,828 words

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South Korea’s birth rate per woman, which was already low, fell even lower in 2023 to 0.72, which is roughly a mere third of the country’s replacement level of 2.1. The BBC even published an article exploring why women in South Korea are choosing not to have children. While terrifying, South Korea is an informative case study in demographic decline, because unlike most Western countries, they are not run by a hostile elite. To the contrary, several South Korean politicians have sincerely declared their low birth rate to be a “national emergency,” and not just as a pretext for mass migration. Neither does South Korea suffer from white guilt. This allows us to isolate and study other variables, and thus formulate solutions that can be put in place when our hostile elites have been removed from power.

We can dismiss some issues in the BBC article out of hand. I doubt that something as easy and frivolous as household chores are really the root cause of why women are not having children. If it is, they are incorrigibly decadent and therefore not even worth trying to save. But the molehill of chores can transform into a mountain if there is no work-life balance, and the complete absence of a work-life balance in South Korea was the most striking theme of the BBC’s article.

The main culprit is the hyper-competitive form of capitalism in South Korea, which destroys the work-life balance, and by extension, the birth rate. Competition and productivity are good, but there can be too much of a good thing. The poison is in the dose. Nature prefers balance in all things, as Aristotle recognized in his Golden Mean, and humans are still part of nature, no matter how much some of them try to deny that fact. The biological nature of humanity limits what is sound policy. Any theory that does not accurately incorporate the facts of human nature will inevitably fail, or at least underperform, and thereby weaken the nation.

Prussian Socialism, as admired by Oswald Spengler, can inspire alternatives to Korean Capitalism. Prussian Socialism must be distinguished from the Marxist socialism favored by the woke Left. Prussian Socialism is focused on empowering the nation as a totality, as opposed to pandering to various losers and parasites, or the vague concept of “the workers.” The term “worker” should be synonymous with what mainstream conservatives mean when they say “taxpayer,” which is the healthy, productive elements of the country, whether they make a living from manual labor or otherwise, and not the liberal understanding of the worker as an intersectional barista who imagines himself as akin to a nineteenth-century industrial laborer.

Socialism shouldn’t be a dirty word, and intersectional baristas should not have a monopoly on socialism any more than BlackRock should have a monopoly on real estate. In fact, Spengler proposed that socialism existed independent of, and before, Marx. Prussian Socialism can tame the excesses of capitalism without destroying the economy. At some point, the Communists are correct in saying that capitalism is a necessary condition for a Communist revolution. If the excesses of hyper-capitalism aren’t moderated, it will lead to broken, discontented masses brimming with “revolutionary potential,” which is a fancy way of saying a desire to destroy civilization out of desperation or spite. Even a businessman who is wholly indifferent to national well-being should therefore prefer Prussian Socialism over Korean Capitalism, if for no other reason than to save his own hide.

Demographic decline will eventually affect a businessman’s bottom line, and even more so in a liberal democracy. If the birth rate drastically declines, elderly pensioners will become a larger proportion of the population and wield more electoral power. This is why politicians are almost as beholden to the American Association of Retired Persons as they are to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The elderly will naturally be focused on securing their pensions, but there will not be enough taxpayers to fund those pensions. And because many of them are childless, they will not have a direct, emotional interest in securing the existence of their people. This will dangerously heighten the temptation to import hordes of foreign laborers to artificially boost the gross domestic product in the short-term, despite how over the long term the costs of immigration will vastly outweigh any short-term benefits, as explained by Ann Coulter in ¡Adios, America! — even if we limit the analysis to economics. The temptation to increase the national debt to maintain pension programs and thus pass it, along with onerous compound interest, on to the youth to deal with will likewise increase in a similar manner.

Meanwhile, the comparatively few youths who are born in a hyper-capitalist country, even if it is ethnically homogeneous, will start “quiet quitting,” i.e. doing the bare minimum, in regards to both their employer and the nation as a whole. For example, in Japan there is already a rising issue of hikikomori, or extreme social withdrawal among young adults, driven in part due to the stress of their hyper-competitive economy, even though it is nowhere near as bad as in South Korea.

If the youth withdraw, that means fewer workers in the economy, and less motivated ones. In America, while employer complaints about zoomer employees might be well justified, one has to remember that their lack of motivation is also understandable in light of the current economic reality. Yes, the zoomers have a sense of entitlement — to an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work and the middle-class lifestyle they were promised.

Korean-style capitalism also undermines patriotism. Aside from widespread disillusionment, it leaves little time for religious or cultural activities such as church attendance, pumpkin carving, or fireworks displays. They end up being carried out in a rushed manner as empty rituals, if not abandoned altogether. While these things have no immediate actual economic value, they are what binds society together and quietly nurtures patriotism. Without them, the citizenry will not be emotionally invested in the country, and this includes the economy.

Conscription is very unpopular in Korea, despite having a hostile, dystopian regime to the north as a neighbor. At some point, North Korea will be able to simply walk into South Korea, because the only people left to resist will be old people in diapers and a disillusioned youth who see no reason to die for a green line if it is merely a question of exchanging one dystopia for another.

Aside from withdrawing from society, a disillusioned youth may also go on the attack via barista-style socialism, allying with or inviting in third-world immigrants to help fight the system.

All of these reasonably foreseeable outcomes of Korean-style capitalism should be of great concern for a businessman, even if he is indifferent toward his nation. If immigrants are welcomed, it may seem as if they are a source of cheap labor, and perhaps even an effective way to break up the majority’s resistance to his predatory policies. But this creates a latent fifth column of low-IQ, resentful foreigners who naturally think in terms of haves and haves-nots which he would be foolish to assume he holds indefinite control over. This creates risk, which a wise businessman should be averse to.

Furthermore, there is the risk of higher taxes being levied on business in order to fund pensioners, or perhaps even to “eat the rich” purely out of spite. And while simply increasing the debt might seem like a good idea, as it indeed would be for certain pensioners who won’t have to deal with it, a younger businessman should not assume that he will outlive the consequences of a national debt bomb exploding.

But even if an economically rational businessman agreed with all of this, he is still stuck in a “prisoners’ dilemma” with other cutthroat businessmen and companies. While everyone would indeed be better off working together, there is still a strong individual incentive for each of them to betray everyone else. South Korea, or any nation, would be better off if businesses moderated themselves. But if one business moderates itself while the others remain hyper-competitive, it will be destroyed.

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Game theory offers a way out of the prisoners’ dilemma. You can read more about game theory as applied to race relations here, and as applied to international relations here. A common solution to the temptation to engage in competitive behavior when it offers strong individual benefits, despite the fact that everyone instead engaging in cooperative behavior would be highly beneficial, is to appoint a neutral, outside arbiter.

For example, Country A and Country B may both understand that overfishing the cod in a nearby sea to extinction would be disastrous, but if the other side is going to overfish and they don’t, they will lose out on cod in both the short- and the long-term. And if the other side acts as a good steward while they do not, they will get more cod today and tomorrow, too. But if they both sign a cod fishing treaty and voluntarily submit to enforcement mechanisms, they will maximize both of their potentials in the long run.

A strong socialist (in the Prussian sense) state is the best solution to the prisoners’ dilemma that arises from hyper-capitalism. It can act as the neutral policeman who will ensure that business maximizes its potential in the long term without devolving into a self-destructive war of all against all.

Is a strong socialist state really the best solution, though? Why not perhaps a voluntary business association instead? This would not work, because too many capitalists are short-sighted enough to cheat, and it is doubtful that any genuine enforcement mechanism could work. The moment one of them thinks he could survive retaliation for betraying the others, he would do so. Chaos would ensue. If a businessman betrays the others, he has probably calculated that he does not need to fear their retaliation. The best arbiter is someone who is not involved in the business who can effectively punish the parties. The state meets both criteria.

Ideally, the arbiter would also have a strong emotional investment in a healthy nation, even if the point of appointing the arbiter is purely economic. Even if one is not a White Nationalist, appointing White Nationalists as arbiters or otherwise working with them is a sound idea because we have expertise and an emotional investment in reversing demographic decline.

Why can’t a liberal democracy do this? The reason is that a weak state will devolve into rule by finance. As observed by Oswald Spengler and countless others, electoral campaigns in liberal democracies require massive funding, which naturally means that candidates will be in the pocket of big business. And as explained by Hans-Hermann Hoppe in Democracy: The God that Failed, politicians are short-sighted and prone to plunder the state today because they can’t be assured that they will control it tomorrow. They are too easily corrupted by a business that wants to cheat against the other businesses. For example, Gavin Newsom carved out an exception to California’s recent minimum wage hike just for Panera Bread, which is one of his top donors. Thus, a liberal democracy’s weak government would simply translate the aforementioned problems of a voluntary business association into the realm of policymaking instead of solving them.

A strong interventionist state is necessary because businesses cannot be trusted to patrol themselves due to their nature, and also because a weak state is too easily captured by those same business interests.

The second most striking issue raised in the BBC article is the overeducation of Korean women and the population in general, which is a sub-issue of the general problem of hyper-competition. As F. Roger Devlin discussed in his book Sexual Utopia in Power, more education strongly correlates with women having fewer children. This is in large part because women are loath to “marry down” for what are ingrained biological reasons.

Like the early socialists, an ideal society would seek to limit female employment as a way to protect them from predatory capitalists and empower them to become mothers, along with carving out specific niches in the economy for them. How much of this is feasible, even in a post-revolution society, is debatable. But Homer Simpson supporting a family of five in a decent neighborhood on a single working-class income wasn’t a utopian fantasy back in the 1990s. Our goal should be a 1-4-40 policy:  One man should be able to support a family of four by working 40 hours a week in a non-entry level job. This is especially true because the 1990s came before the PC revolution, which drastically increased efficiency, and because the nascent artificial intelligence revolution will further increase efficiency, while impacting female employment the most. At some point, the people will demand an equitable share of the wealth generated by computers and AI. If they are not given it nicely, they are more likely to viciously seize it, one way or another.

Education, along with Korean Capitalism overall, has diminishing returns. This is inefficient, and aside from weakening the nation, it is contrary to good business. From the 30,000-foot view of a sovereign state above the frantic moneychangers, demanding that so many people waste so much time in a classroom makes absolutely no sense. There are very few jobs aside from neurosurgery and rocket science which require intensive levels of education. Overeducation likewise debases the quality of the education system, thereby hindering rather than helping to cultivate elite geniuses.

An IQ test is the best indicator of employee success, not education. Such tests are efficient, fair, and accurate. But because black people are disproportionally negatively affected by such tests due to inherent biological differences that we are supposed to deny at all costs, generic IQ tests are outright illegal in the United States. And because it is easy to run afoul of the civil rights litigation racket, even tests that are tightly tailored to a specific job carry undue risks.

The inability to use IQ tests instead of degrees to hire people is but one example of why civil rights caselaw and legislation must be decisively swept away if America, or its successor states, are to enjoy the efficiency of Prussian Socialism — or any alternative to liberal democracy for that matter. While the current Supreme Court is happy to own the libs on religious issues, the “conservative” justices are lukewarm civic nationalists and Christian nationalists, and would never dismantle the decades of anti-white cases that are given undue sanctimony from stare decisis. Aside from being products of the Federalist Society, not a single one of them is a born statesman with an overarching strategic vision, an instinctive understanding of historical forces, or experience in dealing with hard facts.

Thus, along with a strong socialist state, a Caesarian authority figure is also necessary. It is only through such a Caesar that sufficient will-to-power can be mustered to dismantle the post-1960s legal paradigm. The only solution to the Gordian Knot of civil rights caselaw is the sword of Alexander.

Besides the fact that on-the-job training is generally more effective, as well as that 52% of recent college graduates in the US are working in fast food, retail, and other underemployed jobs, overeducation is grossly inefficient, and is not only destroying people’s quality of life — it is undermining the nation. It is downright bizarre that South Korea puts such an inordinate emphasis on education instead of IQ absent civil rights caselaw, seemingly only as a way to one-up and throw sharp elbows at each other. As explained by Imperium Press on their Substack, the Korean emphasis on education is a relic of their Confucian heritage, even though this heritage was swept away by liberalism and feminism and now works in tandem with these anti-traditional forces to destroy Korean society from within.

South Korea appears to be a well-functioning and tranquil country, but from a strategic view it is in the throes of an unending, non-violent war of all against all. South Korea is essentially fighting itself, thereby not just making its people miserable but also diminishing its power. One of the women interviewed by the BBC said, “I’ve had to compete endlessly, not to achieve my dreams, but just to live a mediocre life.” This is diametrically opposed to Prussian Socialism, in which there may be a hierarchy, but everyone has a position to fill and there is cooperation, with even the Kaiser serving as first citizen to the state.

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Prussian Socialism is all for all. Korean Capitalism is all against all.

A healthy nation should cooperate as a sports team does. There may be ample internal competition, but not at the expense of the team. Nobody except for parasitic lenders and colleges are served by requiring degrees for jobs that shouldn’t require them. Not having a college degree, or heaven forbid earning only an A- in high school math, shouldn’t render one a subhuman unworthy of having a family — and I say this as an overachiever. Even with AI and automation, we will need plumbers. And if plumbers and the like aren’t afforded basic human dignity, one should not expect it from them in return. Unrestricted class warfare, as practiced in South Korea, risks transforming people who would otherwise be patriots into a resentful fifth column.

This war of all against all is destroying South Korea to such an extent that it is less sustainable than North Korea, which for all of its dystopian policies and chronic food shortages still has a birth rate of 1.79. While this remains below their replacement level of 2.1, at some point North Korea will be able to conquer South Korea with ease if current trends continue. If a meme ideology such as Juche is less destructive than your system, your system has failed.

What policies could America and the broader West adopt to avoid becoming like South Korea? We could reject toxic feminism, which is the focus of Imperium Press’ analysis of South Korea’s crisis. Just as rejecting overeducation, this would almost certainly require escaping the civil rights legal paradigm. In the meantime, Hungarian-style financial incentives to increase birthrates could mitigate the problem.

Financial incentives have worked relatively well in Hungary, with the current total fertility rate of 1.55 being well above that of 1.3 in 2003. While 1.55 is still below replacement level, it is not a demographic catastrophe. But Hungarian-style financial incentives have failed to work in South Korea, probably because unlike Hungary, South Korean society remains miserable due to hyper-capitalism and wallowing in radical feminism. South Korea’s birth rate cannot be reversed purely through the capitalist method of throwing money at it.

This has important implications for America. Hungarian-style financial incentives will work best if they are combined with a healthy society. While American society is nowhere near as toxic as South Korea’s in regards to hyper-competition, it has begun to slowly slouch in that direction. Immigration and feminism only serve to further exacerbate the problem. Maximizing demographic outcomes will require financial incentives working in tandem with a healthy underlying society that has a work-life balance, home affordability, ethnic homogeneity, traditional gender roles, and social cohesion.

Some might argue that we do not need drastic measures, as South Korea does. In 2021, the total fertility rate for non-Hispanic whites in America was 1.6, well above South Korea’s apocalyptic 0.7, and even slightly above Hungary’s 1.55. Many have predicted that we are currently in a demographic bottleneck which will be followed by a large rebound, because if natalism is in large part genetic and only the most naturally pro-natal people are having children, the next generation will be more pro-natal than the current population.

An issue with relying on a rebound happening on its own is that we do not want to overly saddle the potential rebound generation with debt, a large number of pensioners, or even worse, foreign immigrants. Also, a rebound might be logical, but is still entirely speculative. Spengler was right to remark that “optimism is cowardice,” and we should not gamble our national destiny on an optimistic theory. A rebound may also take more than one generation to happen, which heightens the risk that society will have drastically declined by the time it happens. South Korea shows that hyper-capitalism, like feminism, is pure poison and must be avoided at all costs. We owe it to our descendants to take practical action in the here and now. Instead of hoping that future generations will somehow be genetically immune to bad ideas, why don’t we just stop teaching and acting on bad ideas today?

Crisis is also opportunity. Babies have become a strategic resource in a worldwide demographic winter. Those countries that better manage the current crisis will have a big strategic advantage over those that do not when the crisis finally ends. Adopting pro-natal policies is as much about seizing opportunity as it is about avoiding doom. But this requires a long-term perspective, which liberal democracy and capitalism are wholly incapable of due to their short-sighted greed, thereby necessitating illiberal options such as Prussian Socialism and Caesarism.

While Spengler predicted in his essay “Prussianism and Socialism” that there would be a global conflict between socialism and capitalism, he also thought that only Germans could truly practice Prussian Socialism because it arose from an ancient knightly impulse derived from duty and command, as opposed to the fundamentally Viking impulse in English capitalism for individuality and plunder. In fact, Spengler denounced English socialism as essentially capitalism for the poor, because they were solely focused on wages as opposed to rank.

America, South Korea, or any other country for that matter may not be able to simply duplicate Prussian Socialism, but it can provide inspiration for socialisms tailored for the instincts of our respective peoples. In fact, Theodore Roosevelt’s nationalist policies of trust-busting and environmentalism could serve as a useful template for an American socialism.

A hurdle to an American version of Prussian Socialism is that we do not have a tradition of a strong state. We likewise inherited a strong Viking, as opposed to knightly, impulse from our colonist and pioneer ancestors. However, in Imperium Francis Parker Yockey explained that America’s lack of a state tradition was due to the frontier and the absence of a single serious, competitive state in North America that could have provided a reality check for the United States.

But white America has found itself under a hostile occupational state and enmeshed with foreign peoples who instinctively understand Carl Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction that underlies politics. Necessity is the mother of invention, so now is the perfect time to develop a state tradition of our own. Aside from being uninspiring, because they have been overused as buzzwords, old-fashioned capitalism and liberal democracy will never be able to offer real solutions.

Prussian Socialism or a variation of it can prevent a Communist revolution or a demographic implosion — while Korean Capitalism will all but guarantee them.

The above essay was reprinted from The Homeland Institute’s website.