On Juche's Relationship with Marxist Leninism

The other day I mentioned that I was studying Juche and said that I would try to put my thoughts to paper so to allow other people to read that instead of having to study it on one's own (which isn't recommended). So I typed it up and posted it on my blog. Here it is:

http://aroundthepear.blogspot.com/20...onship-to.html

Some Thoughts on Juche's Relationship to Marxism

The other day I was studying for one of my AP classes and I thought that since I was a bit bored I'd take a break to "study" something slightly more interesting pertaining to Marxism; and since I do intend to write a critique of Kimilsungism-Kimjongillism as an ideology rather than as a phenomena when I am done writing a critique of Pham Binm's work on the Syrian question. So I found a study guide on Juche that those fine fellows at the Korean American Friendship Association were good enough to put together and I read a few pieces from there, and although this essay won't me a comprehensive critique of Juche, I will try to engage the subject manner at least briefly. Mostly I'll just be giving my impressions of Juche as I attempt to study it and to point out that it is not, as some say, a creative application of Marxist Leninism to the concrete realities of North Korea, but rather an ideology that sees it's self only as tangential to Marxist Leninism.

Whenever North Korea is accused of being revisionist, generally speaking a DPRK sympathizer will respond with a quote from Kim Jong Ill's work Let us Advance Under the Banner of Marxist Leninism and the Juche Idea, "To adhere to the Juche standpoint in the revolution and construction conforms with the essential character of Marxism-Leninism as a creative doctrine". However when Kim Jong Ill said this he was not referring to Juche as a Marxist-Leninism, rather he simply was noting that Marxist-Leninism is the historical predecessor to Juche and only has a tangential relationship to it. In his work, Some Problems in the Ideological Foundations of Socialism he clarified his position when he said:


"Long ago I said that we must put the main emphasis on originality while viewing it in context with derivations in the understanding of the correlation between the Juche idea and Marxism-Leninism. This means that we should put the main stress on its originality when we view the Juche idea, the revolutionary ideology of the great leader. The Juche idea must not be viewed as a simple inheritance and development of Marxism-Leninism; it must be viewed as a new and original idea."

So in a nutshell, while they don't explicitally reject Marxist-Leninism, they don't consider Juche in anyway related to Marxist-Leninism and consider it the offspring of Kim Ill Sung's unique political and philosophical thought rather than as a continuation of the project started by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Additionally it's important to note that Kim Jong Ill's work Let us Advance Under the Banner of Marxist Leninism and the Juche Idea was written in 1983 when North Korea still received aid from it's two trading partners, China and the Soviet Union, so within the context of the Soviet-Sino Split it was most profitable to pay homage to Marx while having a deliberately ambiguous ideology as to not step on the toes of either superpower. Nowadays North Korea has removed all references to Marxist-Leninism and Communism in it's constitution, presumably because these references no longer could guarantee them food aid and because in doing so the North Korean state could reinforce the originality of Kimilsungism while opening up the way for future economic reform such as the ones in the Rason and Kaesŏng Special Economic Zones. However Kim Jong Il quotes aside, even as far back as 1976, the Workers Party of Korea can be quoted issuing statements such as this in one of their talks, On Correctly Understanding the Originality of Kimillsungism:


Since we formulated the revolutionary thought of the leader as Kimilsungism and gave a definition of it, people have come to see it in a new light. At present, everyone is calling the revolutionary thought of the leader Kimilsungism, and is saying that it is a system based on the idea, theory and method of Juche. Formerly, the revolutionary idea of the leader was called a contemporary Marxism-Leninism. Of course, there is some truth in
that, but this is not a correct definition, since it refers primarily to its inheritance of Marxism-Leninism. No one now calls the leader's revolutionary thought that way. However, there is still a tendency to interpret it within the basis of Marxism-Leninism. We call the leader،'s revolutionary thought Kimilsungism because the idea and theory advanced by him are original.


So I think it is quite obvious that not even the Worker's Party of Korea thought they were Marxist, nonetheless a revisionist deviation from Marxism.

The next thing I'd like to note is the contradictory attempt to reconcile Dialetical Materialism with Juche. For example in reference paper provided in the Korean Friendship Association's study guide, Fundemental Questions of Philosophy Answered by the Juche Idea, Kim Jong Ill is quoted as saying of Marxism that:


"The basic question of philosophy from the early period of the development of the philosophical world outlook and the question was scientifically answered by the Marxist materialistic dialectical world outlook."

Now while this sounds like an endorsement for Dialetical Materialism, within the same work the Juche Idea is summarized as an idealist construction that seems to contradict this endorsement for Marxist-Leninism:


“That the world is dominated and reshaped by man is a new viewpoint on the world in relation to man.”

This sentiment is repeated in work Let us Advance Under the Banner of Marxist Leninism and the Juche Idea that was quoted earlier in this essay. In attempting to describe Juche briefly, Kim Jong Il said:


"In a nutshell, the Juche idea means that the masters of the revolution and construction are the masses of people and that they are also the motive force of the revolution and construction."

So how does Juche reconcile the Materialism of Marxism with their human centered outlook that is somewhat reminiscent of Humanism and far closer to idealism? Simply put, although Marx is appreciated as a historical figure, he is not seen as an intellectual predessor and hence they do not feel the need to mend this obvious contradiction. In the talk on Kimilsungism, On Correctly Understanding the Originality of Kimillsungism, it is said of the relationship of Marxism and Kimillsungism that:

"The Juche idea which constitutes the quintessence of Kimilsungism, is an idea newly discovered in the history of human thought. However, at present there is a tendency to interpret the Juche idea on the basis of the materialistic dialectic of Marxism. Not so long ago I received a letter which propounded the viewpoint that the Juche idea is a materialism of Juche and a dialectic of Juche. This
shows that the originality of the Juche idea is not correctly understood. The materialistic dialectic of Marxism presented the correlation between matter and consciousness and between being and thinking as the fundamental question of philosophy and proved the primacy of matter, the primacy of being. On this basis it clarified the laws of motion of the objective world. The material nature of the world and its universal laws of motion having been clarified, the Juche idea presented the position and role of man in the world as the
fundamental question of philosophy and proved that man is the master of everything and decides everything. It explicated on this basis the law that governs the domination, transformation and development of the world by man. The Juche idea puts man in the place of master who dominates the world, instead of simply presenting him as a part of it. This philosophical principle of the Juche idea cannot be explained within the framework of materialistic dialectic."

So in short, the only relationship that Kimilsungism and Marxism ever had was in their historical, not intellectual origins, and that for this reason Kimilsungism can not be seen as a revisionist form of Marxism because it does not consider it's self a form of Marxism, hence relationship between the two ideologies is Nil.

/end

There was supposed to be a spoiler here, but it didn't work here for some reason



In essence, after reading a few of Kim Jong Ill's and Kim Il Sung's works, one can see that neither of the thinkers thought themselves related to Marxism other than tangentially. So I suppose you can use the information I have here to show any Jucheist that you encounter that Juche is not a Marxist ideology.

Whomever thought it was is either stupid or not a Marxist.

It would be interesting to actually buy/obtain various Kim Il Sung/Kim Jong Il/DPRK books on Juche and do a detailed study demolishing it as an idealist, metaphysical and anti-communist "philosophy," although the end result would probably just be "why did you waste so much effort in something that's very obviously not Marxist?"

Good work, comrade. This will definitely come in handy for any Juche apologists I encounter out there.

Thanks for your work, comrade! Yesterday, my history teacher called the DPRK the last "stalinist" country. I was able to prove that his claim was wrong thanks to your calarification of "Juche". Another example why the term "stalinist" is useless, too...

Thanks for your work, comrade! Yesterday, my history teacher called the DPRK the last "stalinist" country. I was able to prove that his claim was wrong thanks to your calarification of "Juche". Another example why the term "stalinist" is useless, too...

Could you tell me how that went down by any chance?

It is a monarchy with only the most superficial "left" coloration.... in form and quasi-religious ideology it is much closer to the Japanese emperor system than it is to socialism.

On one level, the North Koreans make that obvious by explicitly differentiating between Juche (an extreme nationalism of an almost racist kind) and communist ideology.

But even if they didn't, we should be able to see how odious this super-militarized, conformist and regimented society is.

And, in some ways, leftists who think North Korea is socialist also tend to think almost *any* third world bureaucrat-capitalist dictatorship is fine (IF it has conflicts with the U.S.)

Could you tell me how that went down by any chance?

He asked the class what "stalinist" countries still exist. Someone mentioned North Korea which was what the teacher wanted to hear. Then I tried to prove them wrong by bringing up "Juche"; it was quite easy actually, as the teacher didn't even know the term and ideology behind the DPRK. By the end of the lesson, he didn't believe that the DPRK is a "stalinist" country any longer 1

He asked the class what "stalinist" countries still exist. Someone mentioned North Korea which was what the teacher wanted to hear. Then I tried to prove them wrong by bringing up "Juche"; it was quite easy actually, as the teacher didn't even know the term and ideology behind the DPRK. By the end of the lesson, he didn't believe that the DPRK is a "stalinist" country any longer 1

This is good. I read an article today which mentioned that "experts" consider North Korea one of the two (Cuba being the other) surviving "Stalinist" states. Of course they "experts" know almost nothing about "Stalinism", Marxism-Leninism and Juche, but Stalinism sounds bad so why not use it? Pure propaganda.

There's also this analysis: http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/KoreaNS.htm