As the people that understand socialism have been saying, "state ownership," is not socialism. It never was. I always find these instructive examples:
James Connolly wrote:Socialism properly implies above all things the co-operative control by the workers of the machinery of production; without this co-operative control the public ownership by the State is not Socialism – it is only State capitalism. The demands of the middle-class reformers, from the Railway Reform League down, are simply plans to facilitate the business transactions of the capitalist class. State Telephones – to cheapen messages in the interest of the middle class who are the principal users of the telephone system; State Railways – to cheapen carriage of goods in the interest of the middle-class trader; State-construction of piers, docks, etc. – in the interest of the middle-class merchant; in fact every scheme now advanced in which the help of the State is invoked is a scheme to lighten the burden of the capitalist – trader, manufacturer, or farmer. Were they all in working order to-morrow the change would not necessarily benefit the working class; we would still have in our state industries, as in the Post Office to-day, the same unfair classification of salaries, and the same despotic rule of an irresponsible head. Those who worked most and hardest would still get the least remuneration, and the rank and file would still be deprived of all voice in the ordering of their industry, just the same as in all private enterprises.
Therefore, we repeat, state ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism – if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials – but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism.
Schemes of state and municipal ownership, if unaccompanied by this co-operative principle, are but schemes for the perfectioning of the mechanism of capitalist government-schemes to make the capitalist regime respectable and efficient for the purposes of the capitalist; in the second place they represent the class-conscious instinct of the business man who feels that capitalist should not prey upon capitalist, while all may unite to prey upon the workers. The chief immediate sufferers from private ownership of railways, canals, and telephones are the middle class shop-keeping element, and their resentment at the tariffs imposed is but the capitalist political expression of the old adage that “dog should not eat dog.”
It will thus be seen that an immense gulf separates the ‘nationalising’ proposals of the middle class from the ‘socialising’ demands of the revolutionary working class.
Frederick Engels wrote:But of late, since Bismarck went in for State-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that without more ado declares all State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the State of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of Socialism.
If the Belgian State, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the State the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the Government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income independent of parliamentary votes — this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic institutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in Frederick William III's reign, the taking over by the State of the brothels.
Truth To Power wrote:No, North Korea is [the socialist idea].
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.
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quetzalcoatl wrote:Socialism will always be under threat because of capitalists need to destroy it whenever and however they can. I don't dispute this for a second. But it betrays a belief in the inherent weakness of socialism. They believe the actual practice of socialism must be delayed because it is not self-supporting. Would an actual ground-level socialism in Kruschev's Soviet Union have been capable of defending itself against American nukes and Nato invasion? We will never know the answer to this question, since such a transformation was literally unthinkable in the Soviet system. The dictatorship would have never withered away, only transformed itself into a kind of gangster capitalism. Putinism, not socialism, was always the logical end-game, no matter how sincere the beliefs of Lenin or Trotsky.
I would contend that a large part of this came because capitalism is an international system, and thus an international solution is necessary to make socialism. And Lenin, Marx, and Engels consistently underlined this.
The Soviet experiment was far better than people give it credit for. Virtually every country in Europe had soviets and people fighting to join; there were communist parties in Japan before Stalin, and throughout the Middle East people were handing out books by Marx and Lenin as the means of decolonization and resistance while the Chinese were preparing to rise. But, obviously, it didn't happen.
I compare it more to the English Civil War than anything. The rest of the world didn't really know what to do with a republic, in part, and so this great experiment in a liberal republic became a horrendous tyranny before collapsing in on itself. It in no way meant that the bourgeois forces that stimulated it were spent, just that things weren't going to happen.
Or, later, the French Commune was often thought to have meant the end of socialism—long before the Russian Revolution.
But, I do concede, this is all theory and not fact.
Speaking of which, capitalism and democracy in any real sense are not compatible in
practice, only in
theory.
You may have Freedom of the Press, but if you aren't Ted Turner, do you really get the same freedom that he does?
You may have Freedom of Religion, but if you were a Muslim living in the rural South, would you really get that same freedom in the same way Protestants in the same area do?
Lenin wrote:In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy", "cannot be bothered with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.
But let us go further. The smug reactionary might question, "
Poor people in the United States have access to electricity. How poor can they really be?"
But this only further alienates the working person into a machine, alienated from society, from himself, from everything else.
And it's not like this is something Marx didn't think of. Wealth, and the conception of it, is social rooted in the material.
Marx wrote:Let us suppose the most favorable case: if productive capital grows, the demand for labour grows. It therefore increases the price of labour-power, wages.
A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.
An appreciable rise in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital. Rapid growth of productive capital calls forth just as rapid a growth of wealth, of luxury, of social needs and social pleasures. Therefore, although the pleasures of the labourer have increased, the social gratification which they afford has fallen in comparison with the increased pleasures of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the stage of development of society in general. Our wants and pleasures have their origin in society; we therefore measure them in relation to society; we do not measure them in relation to the objects which serve for their gratification. Since they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.
But wages are not at all determined merely by the sum of commodities for which they may be exchanged. Other factors enter into the problem. What the workers directly receive for their labour-power is a certain sum of money. Are wages determined merely by this money price?
The very fact that these levels upon levels remain tiered, one on top of the other; that there exists an elite that can exercise his freedom and is not constrained by the material and social restrictions of his masses of lessers —this must make a sane person question what democracy means, and how it actually tallies with democracy in any substantial way.
- By Rich
- By ingliz
- By Unthinking Majority