Marxists-Leninists on the DPRK...

Since the end of the War of Korea in 1953, the Korean peninsula has been divided in two states: South Korea, a capitalist-bourgeois state of the classical type with regional imperialist ambitions but under American influence; and North Korea, a capitalist-bourgeois state of the revisionist type which during several decades was a satellite of soviet social-imperialism and which is now under the sway of Chinese social-imperialism. Since the very beginning, the North Korean “Workers’ Party” always committed serious anti-Marxist mistakes. And this is not surprising because a party which represents and defends the interests of the North Korean national bourgeoisie can never simultaneously embrace a correct communist and proletarian line; on the contrary, such an anti-socialist and pro-capitalist party will necessarily endure the aggravation of its own degeneration. This is the case of the North Korean “Workers’ Party”. In his book “The Krushchevists”, Comrade Enver recalls:


“On September 7 (of 1956) we arrived in Pyongyang. They put on a splendid welcome, with people, with gongs, with flowers, and with portraits of Kim Il Sung everywhere. You had to look hard to find some portrait of Lenin, tucked away in some obscure corner. (…) the revisionist wasp had begun to implant its poisonous sting there, too.” (Enver Hoxha, The Khrushchevists, Tirana, 1980, edition in English).


Therefore, we can see that one of the main characteristics of Kim-Il-Sungism (the North Korean variety of revisionism) was already present: the intense personality cult organized around Kim Il Sung with the consequent minimization of the true Classics of Marxism-Leninism like Lenin. In his brilliant book “Reflections on China”, Comrade Enver Hoxha perfectly and accurately described Kim Il Sung as being a “vacillant, megalomaniac revisionist” and bluntly said that:


“Kim Il Sung, (…) is a pseudo-Marxist.” (Enver Hoxha, Reflections on China, Volume II, August 21, 1975, Tirana, 1979, edition in English).


As time passed, Kim-Il-Sungism proved to be one of the more disgusting and reactionary forms of revisionism, whose treason was rightly understood by comrade Enver:


“The leadership of the Communist Party of China has betrayed (socialism). In Korea, too, we can say that the leadership of the Korean Workers' Party is wallowing in the same waters.” (Enver Hoxha, Reflections on China, Volume II, June 7, 1977, Tirana, 1979, edition in English).



When the Soviet revisionists conquered power and started to spread their pro-capitalist poison, the North Korean revisionists tried to give an image of “loyal Marxists” and affirmed to be “totally against revisionism”. But this was just empty talk. During many years, North Korea was completely dependent on Soviet social-imperialism and on foreign capitalist credits. Comrade Enver understood this and by occasion of Tito’s visit to North Korea he analysed that:


“(…) Tito is going to Korea to carry out negotiations on behalf of American imperialism with Kim Il Sung and not to get credits, because there are no strong-rooms in Korea from which Tito can get them. Korea is so deeply in debt itself that it is unable to meet its repayments.” (Enver Hoxha, Reflections on China, Volume II, June 7, 1977, Tirana, 1979, edition in English).



With the fall of soviet empire in 1989-1991, North Korea continued to be a highly indebted country which is nowadays being invaded by Chinese imperialist credits. North Korea’s external debt is of many millions of dollars and the country’s commercial balance suffers from a significant and systematic deficit. This situation is totally opposed to that of Socialist Albania of Comrade Enver Hoxha which relied on its own internal forces and was never dependent of foreign credits and “aids”.

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This principled and Marxist-Leninist stand is on the antipodes of that adopted by the bourgeois-capitalist North Korean regime. Indeed, North Korean anti-socialist ruling classes even “officialized” their country’s total dependence on foreign imperialist credits:


“The State shall encourage institutions, enterprises or associations of the DPRK to establish and operate equity and contractual joint venture enterprises with corporations or individuals of foreign countries within a special economic zone.” (Article 37 of the DPRK's Constitution, September of 1998, edition in english).


As we can see, the social-fascists which rule North Korean not even try to hide their complete allegiance and subordination to world imperialism, on the contrary, they gladly and openly assume it in their own Constitution. This article of the DPRK's Constitution affirms the exact opposite of what the article 28 of the Constitution of Socialist Albania states:


“The granting of concessions to, and the creation of, foreign economic and financial companies and other institutions or ones formed jointly with bourgeois and revisionist capitalist monopolies and states, as well as obtaining credits from them, are prohibited in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania.” (Article 28 of the Constitution of People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, December of 1976, edition in english).


In face of this, it is incredible how some people who qualify themselves as “communists” and “Marxist-Leninists” still dare to affirm that the ultra-reactionary North Korea is a “socialist country”! The North Korean regime has absolutely nothing to do with socialism. The power structures in North Korean are similar to those of the most backward capitalist-feudal states. When Kim Il Sung died, his son Kim Jong Il was his successor and today it is already known that Kim Jong Il’s son will replace his father in the North Korean throne. Yes, throne is the correct word because North Korea’s political and economic system can be rightly defined as a fascist monarchy which oppresses and exploits North Korean workers while the monarcho-fascist bourgeoisie lives luxuriously.


For example, in the early 90’s, North Korea faced a severe famine caused by the appalling weakness of the country’s capitalist economy. This crisis was a consequence of the disappearance of Soviet social-imperialism on which North Korea was totally reliant. And while large numbers of North Korean workers were literally dying of hunger, Kim Il Sung, his son and the other members of the monarcho-fascist bourgeoisie were organizing opulent parties with included magnificent feasts where they received the representatives of the revisionist and neo-revisionist parties. And these representatives of the revisionist and neo-revisionist parties are the ones which are capable of affirming without blushing that North Korea is a “country which is building communism”. To say that North Korea is a socialist country, that is “the last Stalinist state in the world” means to blatantly insult Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism-Hoxhaism, it means to try to discredit communist ideology with the aim of maintaining capitalism’s tyrannical and totalitarian world rule. Today there are no socialist countries in the world; this is the truth whether the revisionists like it or not.

From:
http://anonym.to/?http://ciml.250x.com/ ... _2011.html

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Do we really have to debate again about the terms 'revisionism', 'social-imperialism', and why and where these terms originated?

Lenin wrote a whole article on revisionism back in 1905 and i don't know what Khruschov's "socialist division of labor" is if not social-imperialism (advising the Albanians "not to ruin the nature and grow lemons instead" for example).

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Same goes for the post-Stalin leadership's 'pro-capitalist poison'.

Let's just take the renaming of Stalingrad (probably the Soviet Union's greatest victory in the GPW),isn't that poison?
There are hundreds of other thinks,like releasing criminals and anti-social elements from the camps and so on and so on...

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That's his critique? By that measure he should have found the USSR, even after Stalin to have been the most profoundly Marxist-Leninist state in existence.

I'm not sure i understand you,the "critique" is not based on the number of Lenin posters around...actually it's just an observation that KIS put up his posters everywhere while ignoring Lenin and others...

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And that is why Albanians under Hoxha had to drive horsebuggies through the streets of Tirana into the 1980s.

Maybe,i don't know,but i know that Albania had achieved complete electrification by 1970 and since started exporting electricity,while the DPRK didn't build enough (hydro or nuclear (by the 80s even Bulgaria or Hungary had NPPs)) power stations,instead deciding the built an impressive highway system despite being almost completely dependent on Soviet oil...these 6+ lane roads are all but empty today.Some self-suficiency...

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I picture an angry, scruffy and disheveled man sitting in his basement writing this. To be so vehemently opposed to anything but his own narrow conception of socialism must be painfully difficult. If his socialist opponents are 'social fascists', what does that make ordinary people he meets in the street?

No comment.

As for the Kim III,well,many might have "swallowed" Kim II coming to power,but a 28 year old who did absolutely nothing (but despite that got a rank of a 4 star general some time ago) becoming a successor without even fake elections being held is just ridiculous.


BTW in 1977 KIS staged probably the most extravagant state welcome ever where Tito visited Pyongyang.People say that they've never seen such a grand reception,and Tito travelled to many,many countries...
Mind you,that was in 1977 when Titoism and other moribund revisionisms were so obviously,so visibly rotten,exposed and discredited.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWuYniXONIQ

Who cares that there weren't any pictures of Lenin. Cults of Personalities are lame, always. That's hardly a good determinate for Marxism-Leninism.

Again,it's not a real critique but a small detail,albeit a very ominous one IMO...the fact that KIS didn't even put pictures of classics of Marxism Leninism in prominent places (not that putting posters everywhere makes you a Marxist,but...) should tell us something.
Anyway you saw the welcome Tito got?
"During the offical talks,Tito presents the hosts with the message from president Carter he had received before he the visit.."

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Khrushchev was an undereducated buffoon. He said similarly insensitive and outright stupid things to Soviets ex. 'lets plant corn at the arctic circle'.

Correct,but what i brought up was after all a formulated and internationally professed policy of Khruschov and co.

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His words and foolish actions were not enough to justify such vehement hate from orthodox MLs, and besides, almost everything he did was later undone by Brezhnev. Out of interest's sake, since Brezhnev undid almost everything that Khrushchev did, does this revert the USSR post-Khrushchev back to orthodox ML?

But it was under Brezhnev that further steps towards capitalism were made.The 1965 "Reform",from what i inderstand,introduced the profit and not the social need as the motive,goal of production.
Hoxha wrote:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archi ... /01/10.htm

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Analysis of the facts shows that there can be no question of any moderation of the revisionist positions of the Soviet renegade leadership. All its efforts to create the impression that it is allegedly returning to the old Stalinist positions are a big bluff. There should be no illusion whatsoever that the events in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, and the activation of the liberal extremists in the Soviet Union have opened the eyes of the Soviet counter-revolutionary clique and brought them down to earth. All this has only caused it to change its tactics, to adopt still more demagogical tactics to establish and consolidate the full fascist military dictatorship of revisionist capital and to disguise it.

The Brezhnev-Kosygin clique places great hopes in achieving this success inside the Soviet Union, where there is brutal oppression, a terrible censorship, where the communists and people have been educated merely to repeat and not to do a thorough-going study of the content of the formulas and slogans, and where, finally, the cult of megalomania of the "great and powerful socialist state" continues to develop. It hopes to achieve this also by speaking in a low voice about a "return to the Stalin epoch," to satisfy and deceive thereby the apolitical, the sentimental and the naïve.

It is a duty of all the Marxist-Leninists, in the first place of the Soviet Bolshevik revolutionaries themselves, to expose right to the end this diabolical manoeuvre of the Khrushchevite ruling clique, to reject any illusion with regard to this clique, to intensify the fight against it, to thoroughly expose its real social-fascist and social-imperialist countenance. Faced with the fact of the transformation of the Soviet State into a fascist-type military dictatorship, the Soviet revolutionaries must rise up, organise themselves and throw themselves into struggle and revolution. Their historic responsibility is today greater than ever. There is no doubt that this will be a difficult struggle which will require self-denial and heavy sacrifices. But the Leninist-Stalinist Bolsheviks have never been frightened. We express our deep conviction that they will one day perform with honor their great duty towards their own people and international communism. And the sooner they do this, the better it will be.

The demagogy of the Soviet leading clique for an alleged return to the revolutionary positions of the Stalin epoch, must be exposed also outside the Soviet Union, where it could be established and used by the other revisionist cliques. But, on the other hand, it is obvious that these tactics will sharpen the contradictions in the camp of the revisionists, will lead to the division of the revisionist parties into pro-Soviet and anti-Soviet groups. Indeed, right now the Novotnyists in Czechoslovakia, the Vermeerschists and Thorezists in France, are being called "tough," "Stalinist," because they are supporters of the Soviet revisionists, their agents. The Soviet leading clique is giving and will give to these elements, its whole support so as to establish through them, its control and shattered rule over the other revisionist parties. This cannot avoid meeting the resistance of the other revisionist elements, which will further deepen the division in the revisionist camp.

The duty of the Marxist-Leninists in these countries is to mercilessly unmask the pseudo-revolutionary phraseology of the pro-Soviet agency, to prevent the creation of any illusion whatever in this direction, to exploit the deepening of the contradictions in the fold of the revisionists and to intensify the fight against all the revisionist renegades for their complete destruction.

As to the countries which are ruled by the Soviet revisionists, and where they make the law through the military forces they have stationed there, this manoeuvre can hardly serve because the strengthening of the imperialist-fascist aggressive character of the policy being pursued by the Soviet leading clique cannot help arousing the ever more resolute indignation and protest of the peoples of these counties. Indeed, even the revisionist Quislings who are necessarily obeying the Soviet clique, for their ruling positions have been built on sand, do not want them to undertake a manoeuvre of an alleged return to the Stalin epoch, be it even as a bluff, because, on the one hand, this would attach them still more closely to the Soviet chariot, from which they want to be as independent as possible, and on the other hand, such a manoeuvre would undermine their foundations, inasmuch as they came to power precisely under the banner of the fight against Stalinism. Therefore, here too, divisions will be further sharpened and deepened, inside the revisionist parties as well as between the ruling revisionist cliques and the Soviet leadership. The submission of the revisionist Quislings to the Soviet fascist military dictatorship is temporary. There will be fierce disputes and blows between them up to armed clashes.

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That is political poison. It is the demagoguery of a man who cannot stand up on his own accomplishments, and must drag another (Stalin) into the mud. It's precisely because of this poison that modern Russians are so polarized on Stalin as a personality and cannot form a balanced view that takes account of both his accomplishments and his errors.

But i don't see how Brezhnev was any better under the surface.Has there been a rehabilitation of Stalin,a return to genuine MList positions and a genuine socialist economy? No,on the contrary.The leadership pushed forward with revisionism.

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The point is that Lenin was EVERYWHERE in the USSR post-Stalin. If the USSR was a 'revisionist' 'social imperialist' country by that point, surely a lot of Lenin posters alone doesn't make a country genuinely ML.

I knew that you'd say this,that's why i previously wrote that hundreds of posters don't necessarily mean anything.But don't you find it suspicious that a "Marxist" such as K.I.S. would have his posters hanged everywhere while basically ignoring the rest of the Classics?

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Still, I can't criticize the DPRK for taking advantage of fair and below market energy prices, since their industrialization and mechanization of agriculture was impressive. What should they have done? Predicted Soviet collapse?

Indeed,but what good is an ideology based on a lie? DPRK wasn't an isn't self-sufficient.They should have strived towards that goal more consistently.

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Why not? It wasn't you who wrote this was it Loz?

No,E.Hoxha.Sorry if i didn't get you sarcasm or something here.

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Reagan's visit to Moscow and Gorbachev's narcissistic power trips around the globe are far worse in my book.

Indeed,but i've never seen people on S-E calling Gorby a Marxist.

Enver Hoxha said it guys so it must be true....

No,but do you think it isn't true? I mean i already mentioned the '65 economic "reform" done under Brezhnev...

It's ridiculous to call the DPRK fascist.

Fascism is by definition capitalist. Capitalism is a society based on wage labor. The DPRK is not capitalist except in very limited instances (Special economic zones, street markets). In the DPRK, everybody gets their basic needs fulfilled for free by the state. Economically, that is closer to communism than any Eastern bloc country ever got - in the GDR, food was a commodity, and I'm sure the rest of the ML states weren't much different in that regard.

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Again,it's not a real critique but a small detail,albeit a very ominous one IMO...the fact that KIS didn't even put pictures of classics of Marxism Leninism in prominent places (not that putting posters everywhere makes you a Marxist,but...) should tell us something.

afaik there's a huge Marx poster in Pyongyang. Also, duh: Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il did much more for Korea than Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin did.

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I don't think that the industrial development of Eastern Europe (sans Albania) up to 1989 shows that to be the case. Otherwise why is it that almost every country had an automotive industry, a tractor industry, light goods industries like textiles and leather, and other industries that should have accrued to a single country with the 'comparative advantage'?

Indeed,that's a good and a valid point.
But i still think that it's important to note that pretty much all Eastern European states (Czechoslovakia produced its first car decades before Russia/USSR did) were already (somewhat) industrialized even before WW2.Bulgaria,from what i know,was best known for its agriculture and light industry during the COMECON times.Cuba for example basically lived almost exclusively off sugar cane...

I don't want to derail this thread, but I would like to convince you that the Kosygin/Liberman reforms did not fundamentally alter the socialist system in the USSR. Here are some things I wrote earlier, and still stand by today:[/quote]
I have read your useful posts in these threads however i don't have the knowledge to comment on this further.I'll try to get some more information.

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It's ridiculous to call the DPRK fascist.

Yeah i know,it's quite weird.I don't think DPRK is fascist either.Though through history comparties used the term wrongly on several occasions:for example Pravda called Tito a "fascist" in 1948 and so on...

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In the DPRK, everybody gets their basic needs fulfilled for free by the state.

Source? I mean if this is true,why would there be horribly expensive food-stands only the richest N.Koreans can afford (as noted in Zaruka's report on the DPRK here in this forum).

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afaik there's a huge Marx poster in Pyongyang.

Yeah,i know that.One poster of Marx and Lenin...
There's a huge poster of Mao in Beijing too...

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Also, duh: Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il did much more for Korea than Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin did.

There would be no DPRK without Stalin or Mao.It was Mao's a million+ strong army that saved Kim after the DPRK got beaten by UN in a war he started,from what i know,against Stalin's advice.

Anyway,more on the matter:
http://ml-review.ca/aml/China/KoreaNS.htm

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While resolutely supporting Korean reunification and independence, it is also up to the Marxist-Leninist parties and organisations to tackle the issue of Korean revisionism - as it has developed in North Korea since 1945, without having been affected by the final collapse of the USSR and other revisionist countries during the late eighties. By having creatively applied and modified socialist principles to Korea�s specific conditions, the DPRK claims to have established a socialist society that proceeds towards communism by means of Juche or Kimilsungism.

Nonetheless, the only revolutionary compass in the hands of the working class in order to advance towards socialist, and ultimately communist, societies still remains Marxism-Leninism - i.e., the doctrine of scientific socialism as elaborated by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. It is, therefore, from a Marxist-Leninist perspective that the conclusion must be drawn about the undisputed fact that revisionism only, and not genuine socialism, has been thoroughly implemented in the DPRK up to the present. .

Following liberation from Japan, North Korea was still a semi-feudal country whose capitalist development had just started to take off. It proceeded along the path of "progressive democracy" by overthrowing pro-Japanese capitalist forces and establishing the joint dictatorship of several classes in society, including the national bourgeoisie. Thanks to important reforms of an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal character (with particular regard to agricultural cooperativization and the nationalisation of its main industries), North Korea was able to rapidly overcome its century-long backwardness and transform itself along democratic lines. But neither before nor after the Korean War, at no time since 1945 has the national-democratic stage of the Korean revolution developed into its subsequent, socialist stage under the dictatorship of the proletariat. "Socialist relations of production" in North Korea were officially proclaimed in 1958. But they were, in fact, established without a socialist revolution, i.e., without overthrowing the national capitalist class, which had in the meantime been "remoulded", persuaded to embrace socialism and "voluntarily" absorbed into the "socialist state."

During the late fifties, in order to solve the crucial issue of the dictatorship of the working class, which is indeed essential in strengthening true socialism, the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, simply equated the new democratic system of various classes exercising state power in the DPRK with the dictatorship of the proletariat itself. No working class leadership has ever been subsequently established. And in the absence of a genuine proletarian dictatorship, revisionism could pervade all aspects of social and political life. In essence, therefore, the North Korean revolution can never be regarded as a socialist revolution..

Under the banner of Juche, collectivism was corrupted and began to be transformed into servility towards, and absolute loyalty to, the leader, whose adulation has now reached unimaginable proportions. This personality cult around Kim Il Sung has in turn allowed nepotism and hereditary succession of power with his son, Kim Jong Il, gradually replacing Kim Il Sung as the DPRK�s leader. Policies are now supposed to be implemented by means of "love and trust." Korean revisionism, in the meantime, has evolved into an idealistic and eclectic philosophy confusing socialism and communism with independence, just as the anti-imperialist cause is identified with the socialist revolution!

Such vulgar distortions of scientific socialism have led to a total negation - both in theory and in practice - of Marxism-Leninism in the DPRK. Consequently, they have consolidated a fully fledged revisionist society under the banner of Juche. Its creator, Kim Il Sung, cannot escape political responsibility for having added further confusion and ideological disorientation to the wide-ranging arsenal of modern revisionist trends that prevent the real emancipation of the working class by upholding socialism and communism in words, but not in deeds, under false red flags. It is from the standpoint of a principled Marxist-Leninist criticism that Kim Il Sung should be characterised as a revisionist, notwithstanding his enormous merits as a progressive revolutionary patriot who had energetically mobilised all forces in society to liberate Korea from Japan�s colonial rule and to later challenge US imperialism with the aim of achieving the country�s reunification and independence.

Though the two questions are somehow intertwined, the issue of Korean reunification and independence stands separately from the issue of Korean revisionism. In order to increase internationalist solidarity and assistance to the Korean people, communist parties and organisations world-wide should struggle at the forefront of all initiatives aimed at supporting the DPRK in its heroic, anti-imperialist efforts to challenge US domination and interference in the Korean peninsula and to achieve a lasting peace in a reunified and truly independent state. But while militantly defending the Korean people�s inalienable right to their independence, Marxist-Leninist forces should be equally clear about the limitations of Korean revisionism and the serious damage it is doing to the genuine cause of scientific socialism and communism. Support of Korean reunification and independence must not imply political support of "Korean socialism" under the banner of Juche.

Marxist-Leninists stand by a clear set of principles that are dialectically implemented according to different situations in different parts of the world. But on the pretext of creatively applying them, there exists no need today to invent new "socialisms" and thus deviate from the true revolutionary theory and practice of scientific socialism. Everywhere, the working masses are continuously subjected to imperialist oppression and exploitation, just as they face poverty, social deprivation, unemployment and war. In particular, as the contradictions between the popular masses in semi-colonial and dependent countries, on the one hand, and imperialism and monopoly capital, on the other, together with the contradictions between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie all the world over, are increasingly sharpening and producing an incurable global crisis, it is only Marxism-Leninism - the revolutionary ideology of the working class - that can provide a reliable orientation towards social and national liberation, towards socialism and communism.

Anyway,i think it'd be interesting to compare the ways in which Cuba and DPRK coped with the destruction of the USSR.
Cuba,despite being less focused on "self-reliance" and rather dependable on Soviet oil and other resources (just like the DPRK),despite being under even harsher sanctions and embargoes and,of course,being a stone's throw from the fortress of world imperialism managed to survive and even get back on its feet,all that without massive investments in the military(Cuba's military is indeed rather small) or the nuclear weapons program...