Juche, What is it and How Does it Work?

[Bostana]

What is Juche, where does it originate, how does it work, and does it work?

[Tim Cornelis]

Juche (pronounce Chuche) is the glorious philosophy of the late Great Leader Kim Jong-Il. It argues for mighty self-sufficiency of beautiful North Korea.

It is described as follows: "The Juche idea is the precious fruit of the leader's profound, widespread ideological and theoretical activities, and its creation is the most brilliant of his revolutionary achievements."

You can read on it by reading the glorious "On the Juche Idea" written by brilliant revolutionary Kim Jong-Il who has the cranial capacity of a dozen adult men (yes, his glorious head was humongous)


According to Kim Jong-il's On the Juche Idea, the application of Juche in state policy entails the following:
The people must have independence (chajusong) in thought and politics, economic self-sufficiency, and self-reliance in defense.
Policy must reflect the will and aspirations of the masses and employ them fully in revolution and construction.
Methods of revolution and construction must be suitable to the situation of the country.
The most important work of revolution and construction is molding people ideologically as communists and mobilizing them to constructive action.

(wikipedia)

The actual theorist of the Juche idea defected to South Korea. (I think he is dead now), he still believed in Juche but said North Korea did not implement it as it was intended.

[Deicide]

What is Juche

If you read its ideas, it's basically empty dribble, masked in ''revolutionary'' propaganda and rhetoric. In practice it's fascism with ''asian values''. Although the recent Dear Leader, Comrade Il, and the Eternal President, Comrade Sung, have managed to convince a few lefties that it's socialism. If that's socialism, I'd rather have capitalism. In fact, I would rather be dead than living in North Korea.


And does it work?

Yes, it does work, for the elites that is.


how does it work

It works by enslaving the proletariat.

I personally view it as a natural evolution of the vanguard party. The vanguard, in practice, has always transformed itself into an elite group, with its own distinct elitist consciousness, a new class, if you will. Give a tiny group of evolved apes supreme and unquestionable power over all the other evolved apes, this is the end result. I'm still trying to find a single attempt at socialism via the vanguard that hasn't turned into a dictatorship of the party, for the party.

Considering all the vanguard attempts that have turned into totalitarian regimes ruled by elites, it's almost like it was designed for this very purpose. ;)

[NewLeft]

It is built on Korean nationalism..

[Nox]

It's a far-right wing monarchist fascist state capitalist ideology, basically it's messed up and makes even the most intelligent of people shake their heads in confusion.

[thriller]

IIRC it is the idea of replacing the workers with the army as the revolutionary class. Hence the huge militarization of North Korea. It is a way of saying the army rules society, so do what we say, or ya gonna get shot.

[Grenzer]

According to Rodrigo, it's the natural conclusion of Marxism-Leninism.

In reality it has nothing to do with socialism, though some might call it "Stalinist" I would have to disagree, though it may have been at one point. It's a mistake to consider Juche a theory, or even a coherent ideology, in my opinion. In reality, it's just some bullshit that changes with the time to justify whatever Dear Leader happens to want at the time.

[Deicide]

According to Rodrigo, it's the natural conclusion of Marxism-Leninism.

But he's happy about that conclusion, correct? If a revolution happens, the biggest (or at least second biggest) enemy will be the nutjob stalinists/marxist-leninists that want to hijack the revolution and become elite Gods.

[Q]

Offtopic: When I saw the title at the frontpage, which is cutted off to Juche, What is it and How..., I first thought it was going to say "Juche, What is it and How do we fight it?" :D

But yeah, it's a form of nationalism that is an adaptation to the Korean culture of state worship, which has some historical roots. As an economic system it does not work at all and North-Korea is an enduring reminder why socialism cannot work in one country.

As an aside, North-Korea removed all references to socialism from its constitution a few years ago.

[Grenzer]

But he's happy about that conclusion, correct? If revolution comes any time soon, the biggest (or at least second biggest) enemy will be the nutjob stalinists/marxist-leninists who want to become elite Gods.

Easy there.

Though I won't disagree, you probably want to avoid starting a flame war. Let's stay focused on the topic of Juche.

It could be said that North Korea was a typical Marxist-Leninist state until the late 1950's, when tensions between the People's Republic of China nd the Soviet Union started to rise. This was when the "Theory" of Juche was created. It was essentially formulated to avoid picking a side between China and Russia while retaining the good will of both. Juche underwent it's most radical change after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This was where it began to take on the ultra nationalistic and militaristic tone that we see today. There are books on Juche, but to my understanding few to none that have been translated into English.

[Deicide]

Easy there.

Though I won't disagree, you probably want to avoid starting a flame war. Let's stay focused on the topic of Juche.

It could be said that North Korea was a typical Marxist-Leninist state until the late 1950's, when tensions between the People's Republic of China nd the Soviet Union started to rise. This was when the "Theory" of Juche was created. It was essentially formulated to avoid picking a side between China and Russia while retaining the good will of both. Juche underwent it's most radical change after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This was where it began to take on the ultra nationalistic and militaristic tone that we see today. There are books on Juche, but to my understanding few to none that have been translated into English.

Ceausescu was (supposedly) inspired by Juche for his ''communist'' regime. Or the latter half of it at least.

[Omsk]

Ceausescu was (supposedly) inspired by Juche for his ''communist'' regime. Or the latter half of it at least.


Yes,that's true,and books on Juche were available and translated to Romanian,[it all happened after he made a visit to the DPRK.]

But he generally changed his views a lot.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

Juche is something to get rid of.

[Imposter Marxist]

Juche is basicly a platform for the North Korean party Bourgeoisie to use to cover up the fact they're rapidly implementing state capitalism (And have been for many years) it was an attempt to steer its economy away from being dominated by the other two imperialist/state capitalist countries, Soviet Russia and "Peoples" republic of China.

[Telenus]

Juche is basicly a platform for the North Korean party Bourgeoisie to use to cover up the fact they're rapidly implementing state capitalism (And have been for many years) it was an attempt to steer its economy away from being dominated by the other two imperialist/state capitalist countries, Soviet Russia and "Peoples" republic of China.

You certainly have a talent for stringing together words which mean nothing in the context you're using them and are grammatically and intellectually incorrect most of the time. You used to be cool dude, what happened to you? Anyhow. I implore you to elaborate upon WHY North Korea is a "bourgeois" state, as well as China and Soviet Russia. 'Tis a bit silly, subjectively at least, to throw around baseless accusations whilst providing little to no definitive proof to back up said claims.

[o well this is ok I guess]

I feel like every juche thread should just be a slew of bad "grorious best korea" jokes.
It would probably sum up juche a lot better.

[Imposter Marxist]

I feel like every juche thread should just be a slew of bad "grorious best korea" jokes.
It would probably sum up juche a lot better.


North Korea is a lot better at extracting surplus value from working class than the South, actually

[o well this is ok I guess]

North Korea is a lot better at extracting surplus value from working class than the South, actually I'm not sure how South Korea is related. South Korea is not Best Korea.

[CommunityBeliever]

What is Juche, where does it originate, how does it work, and does it work? Juche is an anti-Marxist, militarist and nationalist ideology. Juche is militarist because it it based upon the dictatorship of the military rather then the dictatorship of the proletariat and it is nationalist because of its considerable emphasis on national self reliance. The 1972 revision of the constitution of the DPRK made it the official state ideology, which marked the complete abandonment of proletarian internationalism by the North Korean regime.

The differences between the DPRK and socialist countries such as Cuba are abundantly obvious. Where as the DPRK is a dictatorship of the military, Cuba is a socialist dictatorship and the proletariat with the collective ownership of lands, sugar mills, factories, chief means of transportation and all those enterprises, banks and facilities, and other means of production and transportation. Furthermore, where is the DPRK is nationalist and isolated from the world, Cuba has over 50,000 overseas health professionals and over 25,000 overseas teachers.

[Rooster]

I implore you to elaborate upon WHY North Korea is a "bourgeois" state, as well as China and Soviet Russia.

Well, maybe one reason would be because they're a state? :confused:

[JeVousAimeGuillotine]

The differences between the DPRK and socialist countries such as Cuba are abundantly obvious. Where as the DPRK is a dictatorship of the military, Cuba is a socialist dictatorship and the proletariat with the collective ownership of lands, sugar mills, factories, chief means of transportation and all those enterprises, banks and facilities, and other means of production and transportation. Furthermore, where is the DPRK is nationalist and isolated from the world, Cuba has over 50,000 overseas health professionals and over 25,000 overseas teachers.

Perhaps you could enlighten me as to how Cuba is a socialist country. I have visited a couple of different threads about Cuba's state as a socialist country. I must say, the vast majority seem to form the consensus that it is a state capitalist country--due to the fact that the workers do not control the means of production. I suppose this would correspond to one's definition of socialism. From a Marxist perspective, I am not sure any state whereby the means of production are owned by anybody other than the proletariat, can be considered a socialist state. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm a bit new to the Marxian perspective, and I'm still learning to the best of my ability.

[Imposter Marxist]

Unless there is an active fight against state capitalism, then the state will become bourgeois, filled with bourgeois state capitalist tyrants. Have we learned nothing from the state capitalist gulags?

[Rooster]

From a Marxist perspective, I am not sure any state whereby the means of production are owned by anybody other than the proletariat, can be considered a socialist state.

I don't know if this is my own interpretation or not, but I think it makes the best sense; socialism is when the means of production are held in common. Not just owned by the proletariat, but held in common. Maybe this is something that is hard to get understand from someone who isn't familiar with European history or in particular, English history. An example would be the forests of England which were common lands. They were looked after by the people who lived there and were used by those same people. I think this is an important difference between a state owning the means of production and the proletariat owning the means of production.

[Ismail]

Juche is an idealist ideology that has little in common with Marxism. It was a way of Kim Il Sung and his group to avoid being overthrown by Khrushchev and in order to take a "neutral" position on the Sino-Soviet split. Instead of adhering to Marxism-Leninism and exposing revisionism, as Enver Hoxha did, Kim decided to criticize Stalin for "dogmatism" among other things and to declare that socialism has many roads, that anti-imperialism must be carried out through the so-called "Non-Aligned Movement," etc. Hence Kim got along well with Tito, Ceaușescu and other "national roads to socialism" revisionist ideologues who appealed to nationalism to maintain power. It was modified in the mid-90's with Kim Jong Il's "Songun," which openly denies the leading role of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the proletariat in favor of the army.

Here's a good, short read: http://espressostalinist.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/the-juche-idea-in-the-light-of-marxism-leninism/

As for Cuba, Fidel Castro and Kim Il Sung got along just fine. Both men, after all, were prominent personalities in the "Non-Aligned Movement" and both were to varying degrees pro-Soviet revisionists. Castro said of Gorbachev in 1992 that he was, "A man of great ability, with good intentions, because I have no doubt that Gorbachev intended to fight to perfect Socialism – I have no doubt of that. But he couldn't manage to find solutions to the big problems his country had." (quoted in one of his autobiographies, My Life, p. 364.)