Victoribus Spolia wrote:Well, he was sort of well known in American academia in the mid twentieth century for his accounts of the rise of the revolutionary government in Russia (he kept extensive diaries of early policies and actions in Soviet Russia). I would put him in a class of thought with Carle Zimmerman of Harvard, and J.D. Unwin of Oxford, in discussing the significance of sexual conduct and familial relations on broader society (I would almost consider myself an Unwinite).
He wrote extensively about the early program of the revolutionary government in Russia, and since he was a prominent anti-communist russian who emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States and was a prominent contributor to theories in Sociology at Harvard, I just assumed you would have likely heard of him or his accounts of the Soviet program regarding sexuality and familial relations.
Maybe a little. Like I said, he sounds vaguely familiar. His view of Lenin seems to be directly contradicted by Lenin (which may be fair, it's more than likely he was looking at what was on the ground and applying that to Lenin).
From everything I know the Soviets, even under Lenin, hardly pushed any kind of "glass of water" theory. Even Kollontai, as mentioned, was into serial monogamy. Though it was far more free than the West was at the time. Except for prostitution and children female sexual partners, the Soviets were much harder on those two things than they were in the West.
Regardless, even if we are to take his account as completely accurate and true, it only undermines the whining cry for hypocrisy in the OP.
It seems to me, that what @Hong Wu, has observed about communist regimes regarding their policies pertaining to human sexuality and marriage may be better explained by the combining of socialist and nationalist conceptions of society.
North Korea does not claim to want socialism, let alone communism.
The North Korean Worker's Party (not named a Communist Party) has not been
an effective organization since the 70s, when the military superseded it—a process
started in 1961.
In their own words, this is what the North Korean state says about Marxism:
Kim Jung Il wrote:The Korean revolution which opened the age of Juche could not advance even a step forward unless it was conducted in an independent and creative way from the start. It was a difficult and complex revolution which had to deal with the tasks of the anti-imperialist, national-liberation revolution, with formidable Japanese imperialism as the target, and those of the anti-feudal, democratic revolution simultaneously. It was an arduous revolution which had to hew out an untrodden path.
What is worse, a strong tendency towards flunkeyism appeared in those days within our anti-Japanese national-liberation movement and communist movement to hamper the advance of the revolution. The nationalists and self-styled Marxists followed the evil practices of flunkeyism and factional strife which had resulted in the country's ruin in the past. They did not try to carry out the revolution by their own initiative but dreamed of achieving independence by depending on foreign forces. At that time, those who were allegedly engaged in the communist movement formed their own party groups and called frequently at the Comintern to gain its recognition. And they endeavored to imitate mechanically established theories and experience of others, without taking into consideration the historical conditions and specific realities in our country where a colonial and semi-feudal society was in existence. In this way, flunkeyism and dogmatism were very serious obstacles in the way of revolution.
Drawing on serious lessons derived from such flunkeyism and dogmatism, the leader clarified the truth that a revolution should be carried out not by anyone's approval or instruction but by one's own conviction and on one's own responsibility and that all problems arising in the revolution should be solved in an independent and creative way. This is another starting point of the Juche idea.
As stated previously, the leader advanced the Juche idea, a new revolutionary idea, on the basis of practical experience and lessons gained in the revolutionary struggle.
The leader has conducted ideological and theoretical activities invariably based on the revolutionary practice, and developed and enriched the revolutionary idea and theories in the course of giving answers to problems arising in the revolutionary practice. Only on the basis of revolutionary practice can one apply existing theories in accordance with the interests of the revolution and actual conditions in one's own country and search for new truths and create new ideas and theories.
In his early years of revolutionary activities, the leader was well versed in Marxism-Leninism. But he did not confine himself to applying Marxism-Leninism to the Korean revolution but pioneered a new phase of revolutionary theory from a steadfast Juche-based standpoint and resolved the problems arising in the revolutionary practice from a unique angle. The leader discovered the truth of Juche idea in the course of the struggle against bigoted nationalists and bogus Marxists, flunkeyists and dogmatists, while hewing out a new path for the revolution.
So the wonderful Juche system they used came about, in part, from fighting against Marxists.
What is this Juche ideal?
Article 3 of Kim Il Sung’s Constitution, the codification of the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung’s Juche-oriented ideas on and exploits in State building wrote:The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is guided in its activities by the Juche idea and the Songun idea, a world outlook centred on people, a revolutionary ideology for achieving the independence of the masses of the people.
First let's look and Songun:
The Official English Explanation wrote:Songun politics is rooted in the military-priority ideology that embodies the Juche idea. President Kim Il Sung is a founder of Songun ideology and an outstanding leader of the Songun revolution. He inherited a revolutionary heritage of two pistols from his father and made a determination to restore the lost country with an armed struggle...
...For almost 70 years starting from the mid-1920s when he embarked on the road of revolution with a high ambition for national liberation, he held fast to the line of giving priority to arms and the military and carried out the military-priority principle through. President Kim Il Sung, in the early 1960s, saw the inheritance of the Songun revolutionary leadership as the fundamental in the inherited revolutionary cause and assigned General Kim Jong Il with the task to be in charge of the army work together with the party work.
This is how the Songun' revolutionary leadership of General Kim Jong Il started with his on-spot guidance to the Guard Seoul Ryu Gyong Su 105 tank division of the Korean People's Army in August Juche 49 (1960). It is since then he gave his on-spot guidance to over hundreds of army units for nearly 10 years by the end of 1960.
In the 1970s and 1980s, he determined as a general task of army building to make the Korean People's Army as the army of Leader and as the army of the Party, and he worked hard to lead the efforts to strengthen the army both politically and ideologically, and militarily and technically. In the 1990s, there came to be a great change in political composition of the world and the balance of forces. The US and the imperialist reactionary forces intensified imprecedent military aggressive manoeuvres to stifle the country, thus laying obstacles in the way of Korean revolution.
General Kim Jong Il, based on a scientific analysis of the changed situation, declared at home and abroad that the politics of DPR Korea is Songun politics and established full the mode of Songun politics. At the first session of the 10th Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK in September Juche 87 (1998), a new system of state mechanism was made with the National Defence Commission as in the focus.
So it's making the military mechanism of revolution. This is the opposite of Marxism which maintains that the working class is the mechanism of revolution. Even in the worst possible example of Marxists in charge, the military is at least theoretically an arm of the working class. In North Korea, this is explicitly the opposite. And this completely anti-Marxist stance is the central philosophy of the state.
Let's look at the Juche:
The official English explanation of the Juche wrote:The Juche idea is based on the philosophical principle that man is the master of everything and decides everything. It is the man-centred world outlook and also a political philosophy to materialize the independence of the popular masses, namely, a philosophy which elucidates the theoretical basis of politics that leads the development of society along the right path.
The Government of the DPRK steadfastly maintains Juche in all realms of the revolution and construction.
Which is explicitly against Marxism, which hinges on the opposite idea:
Marx wrote:Man is a species-being, not only because in practice and in theory he adopts the species (his own as well as those of other things) as his object, but – and this is only another way of expressing it – also because he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being.
The life of the species, both in man and in animals, consists physically in the fact that man (like the animal) lives on organic nature; and the more universal man (or the animal) is, the more universal is the sphere of inorganic nature on which he lives. Just as plants, animals, stones, air, light, etc., constitute theoretically a part of human consciousness, partly as objects of natural science, partly as objects of art – his spiritual inorganic nature, spiritual nourishment which he must first prepare to make palatable and digestible – so also in the realm of practice they constitute a part of human life and human activity. Physically man lives only on these products of nature, whether they appear in the form of food, heating, clothes, a dwelling, etc. The universality of man appears in practice precisely in the universality which makes all nature his inorganic body – both inasmuch as nature is (1) his direct means of life, and (2) the material, the object, and the instrument of his life activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body – nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself human body. Man lives on nature – means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.
And this is important, because the false alienation of this comes from capitalism and the rest of Marx's thoughts come from here. Again, explicitly the opposite philosophy of Marxists. In the Juche world, "People can do anything!" For the Marxists, material conditions of which man is part and dependent upon is what matters.
The purges of the communists was one of the main functions of the Juche (as the North Koreans themselves say), and the author even goes on to completely verify and vindicate Juche is the opposite of Marx and Lenin. The awesome thing is that it adds another element for it not being Marxist at all in pointing out that it's an old Korean application of Confucianism. Which, again, could only be considered not Marxist.
Grace Lee, via Stanford, wrote:...Kim’s unstable power during and immediately following the Korean War caused him to deploy ideological purges in order to consolidate his political position, using the juche principle of national solidarity as a domestic instrument of personal cult-building.
To this end, Kim Il Sung forbade any other ideology from being discussed or taught in North Korea. Since the content and application of the juche ideology were very ambiguous until the late 1960s, Kim Il Sung was the only one who could successfully wield and implement the philosophy. Thus, implementing and executing policies based on juche effectively consolidated Kim Il Sung’s absolute political power and indirectly provided ideological justification for his dictatorship in North Korea.
Perhaps more saliently, juche as the guiding principle of foreign policy was utilized as a means of balancing power between the
Soviet Union and China, and as a means to curb the Soviet and Chinese influence in the country. Kim’s wariness of Sino-Soviet involvement in North Korean domestic affairs was exacerbated by his personal dislike of the Soviets and the country’s national inferiority complex towards major powers.
...The juche ideology that is trumpeted by North Korea as Kim Il Sung’s ingenious and original contribution to the body of political philosophy is really drawn from a centuries-old tradition of Korean political thought. Kim himself has acknowledged that he drew the term and idea of juche from Korean scholars in the early twentieth century, who in turn drew inspiration from Confucian ideas dating back to the original state philosophy of independence espoused by Korean rulers. The tradition of strong nationalism among the Korean people coexisted with another tradition called sadaechuii, in which the Confucian palace officials and educated elite groups jockeyed for foreign support through sycophancy. Kim’s juche ideology may represent his reaction to the slave mentality of sadaechuii as well as an indebtedness to the original nationalistic strain of Korean political culture. Aside from its tremendous appeal to the deep traditional Korean antipathy towards foreign influence, juche serves to intensify the nationalism of the North Korean people, who are told that world civilization originated from the Korean peninsula.
...First, the fundamental tenets of juche—that man is the master of all things and decides everything, and that an ideological consciousness determines human behavior in historical development—contradict Karl Marx's proposition of economic determinism. Marx believed that individual figures had no control over the general trend of predetermined human development, and he did not give man an exalted position in the hierarchy of historical factors of importance. Kim Il Sung, in contrast, saw himself as an absolutely essential figure in the struggle of the working masses against the oppressive middle class.
Juche also diverges from Lenin's focus on the educating and organizing functions of the elite revolutionary vanguard. Authoritarianism is inherent in the juche ideology because the guidance of an "exceptionally brilliant and outstanding leader" is considered essential to the mobilization of the masses of the working class. Unlike Lenin, Kim Il Sung's regime advocated a single leader-headed revolutionary hierarchy rather than a core of outstanding and committed leaders to lead the revolutionary struggle.
...Internationally, Kim Il Sung used the juche ideology as a justification for the elimination of the influence of the USSR and PRC. Political independence from its bigger neighbors has always been a quest of key importance in Korean history.
North Korea, itself, says that it developed itself and its organization in fighting against the Marxists.
North Korea, itself, says that it is not Marxist and opposes Marxism.
North Korea, itself, says that it follows the Songun ideal which is explicitly not Marxist. Again, we know that North Korea had Marxists there, and that their leadership would know Marxism. Since they already said they opposed Marxism, and they came up with a system that is the opposite of Marxism, it seems reasonable to conclude their philosophy is not Marxist.
North Korea, itself, says that it follows the Juche ideal which is explicitly not Marxist. Again, we know that North Korea had Marxists there, and that their leadership would know Marxism. Since they already said they opposed Marxism, and they came up with a system that is the opposite of Marxism, it seems reasonable to conclude their philosophy is not Marxist.
It is not communist, socialist, or Marxist. Explicitly so.
It seems to me, that what @Hong Wu, has observed about communist regimes regarding their policies pertaining to human sexuality and marriage may be better explained by the combining of socialist and nationalist conceptions of society. You mentioned the North Korean Juche philosophy, which essentially combines and morphs a spiritual korean racialist-nationalism with marxism to create a unique system of thought. Like all nationalisms tend to do, marriage and childbearing for the nation is glorified, and it seems that this strain of thought better explains, especially in patriarchal and racialist Asian societies, the emphasis on conservative sexual and familial morality and structures.
Communism is not nationalistic. Explicitly so. It is internationalist.
This said, it does not change the fact that this is a hundred-and-fifty-year-old conversation in Marxist circles. And communists having a debate about communism and using conclusions from that debate about communism probably has something to do with communism. Even if not completely so.
It's possible, and probable, that some of this seeped in after Stalin. Stalin was, for instance, considered by the Orthodox Church to be "
the divinely anointed leader of our armed and cultural forces."
But if we are to accept this, we are ultimately saying that Lenin was a Marxist while Stalin was a nationalist in the way they ran things. The disconnect is still there. And it's not something I'd necessarily disagree with. But, again, this is part of a century-and-a-half old debate around Marxists and hardly seems to me to mean any kind of hypocrisy.
Even in Russia, you take a border-line medieval people of a very different social structure to what was proposed in Marxism, you cannot expect the overthrow of normal and historic sexual relations to bode well. It therefore seems to me, that rather than speculating as to which branch of an internal Leninist debate these nations took, it would be more productive to assume that nationalist thought was allowed to permeate their varieties of Marxism, and that the regimes in question, felt that it was in their interests to do so.
More broadly, it seems, pragmatically speaking, that none of these regimes could have survived otherwise; especially, if Sorokin is to be believed.
Perhaps not. Though I might invert this. It's possible that the regimes did not last because the revolutionary fervor came to an end and the old ways snuck in:
Trotsky wrote:A revolution is a mighty devourer of human energy, both individual and collective. The nerves give way. Consciousness is shaken and characters are worn out. Events unfold too swiftly for the flow of fresh forces to replace the loss.
...Counting over the causes of the degeneration of the Jacobins when in power – the chase after wealth, participation in government contracts, supplies, etc., Rakovsky cites a curious remark of Babeuf to the effect that the degeneration of the new ruling stratum was helped along not a little by the former young ladies of the aristocracy toward whom the Jacobins were very friendly. “What are you doing, small-hearted plebians?” cries Babeuf. “Today they are embracing you and tomorrow they will strangle you.” A census of the wives of the ruling stratum in the Soviet Union would show a similar picture. The well-known Soviet journalist, Sosnovsky, pointed out the special role played by the “automobile-harem factor” in forming the morals of the Soviet bureaucracy. It is true that Sosnovsky, too, following Rakovsky, recanted and was returned from Siberia. But that did not improve the morals of the bureaucracy. On the contrary, that very recantation is proof of a progressing demoralization.
I made my peace. This is an old argument from Marxists, and whatever side they land on will be the side they land on. It is not hypocrisy in either case.
Alis Volat Propriis; Tiocfaidh ár lá; Proletarier Aller Länder, Vereinigt Euch!