What is Juche?

Can any of you explain what is Juche? I looked everywhere about it but I only found criticism with imperialist comments, also the online newspaper that I get my info from (because it isn't corrupted) doesn't write anything about the Juche ideology.

Juche as a concept is very hard to grasp. I'm currently in the process of reading tons of stuff about it - the sources, the actual stuff that Kim and his son have written - so I might be able to help you in a few weeks. At the moment I'm still trying to understand it really.

What I've grasped until now is the following:

Juche as a world view is centered around the popular masses and around the revolution. It analyzes the ways in which class struggle appears and plays a role under socialism (an issue that - as far as I know - was largely ignored by Lenin, first, but only lightly, touched upon by Stalin and then first discussed in detail by Mao, so this is quite a recent development in Marxist ideology). From a Juche viewpoint, revolution is an ongoing process under socialism, and it defines things not by what they are, but what they do; this is a connection to the Leninist philosophy of praxis, I believe. This means that a fighter against imperialism is a proletarian from a Juche viewpoint, because the proletariat is defined as the subject of liberation. The fight for socialism, then, prolatarizes or "working-classizes" the fighter and this way, the concept of proletariat is liberated from its sociological origins. It also seems to be a tenet of Juche that the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer only restricted to the socialist phase. In fact, for Juche, the "transition phase", "socialism", "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and "communism" are separate things that can take place at the same time in different combinations, so Juche postulates that there can be communism (for everybody according to their needs) under the dictatorship of the proletariat within the boundaries of the Korean nation.

It's EXTREMELY interesting.

Kim Jong Il talks a bit more about the Juche idea in this article:

http://www.korea-dpr.com/lib/111.pdf

So, they're essentially arbitrarily saying that if you fight imperialism you can be a proletarian, because a proletarian as far as the kims are concerned is no longer an individual who sells his labour to a capitalist, but this abstract "subject of liberation." That's pretty unscientific.

I'm not convinced, frankly. Seems like it has more in common with Hegel than Marx.

This topic was split from the International Brigade to Defend DPRK thread in V&P. I felt that Red Armenian would find better answers here, and it would have been too off-topic for the matter at hand. - KW

Well it's terribly metaphysical to say that a proletarian is somebody who sells their labour power, isn't it? I mean, that stops under the dictatorship of the proletariat. And even though they don't sell their labour power anymore, they're still proletarians, hence the name of the stage... Also you don't stop being proletarian when you're fired, you know.

But it doesn't stop. Unless you're saying in socialism nobody earns a wage.

That's not selling of labour power. Who, exactly, do you think the proletarian would sell his labor power to under socialism? Who do the enterprises belong to? Right, the whole people. So you're essentially postulating that the proletarian sells his labour power to the whole people, which includes himself. Have you ever sold something to yourself?

Actually, he sells it to the state, and the state is not "the whole people". It's a body with a mandate from the workers to rule over them. Or not, as was the case in the USSR. Claiming the state is the people is just quoting pseudo-philosophical garbage from soviet pamphlets.

If that's your conception of socialism, you're not a socialist but a state capitalist. Of course the means of production belong to the whole people under socialism, that's one of the basic tenets.

You're selling it to other workers. The State, as a business representative of the People, buys labor (at its value) from proletarians to produce things. This is not the cessation of being proletarian but the expansion of proletarianization to every individual in society.

As to the Juche concept of a proletarian I am left with half-agreement half-disagreement. On the one hand they are 'Spiritually Proletarian' in that by fighting for liberation they are fighting for us. But they can still be bourgeoisie though if they still privately own a segment of the means of production and have not turned them over to the organization. I guess you could say I agree with the concept so long as the economic angle is not forgotten.

Guys. Read Marx.

Marxist economics is a critique of capitalist political economy. It is NOT a description of economic rules that is valid under every system. Marxist economics describes capitalism, perioid. Das Kapital contains no information WHATSOEVER that would be useful for socialist economics; that is one of the huge mistakes that socialist states have made in the past. The labor theory of value applies to capitalism. There is no value under socialism. There are no commodities under (developed) socialism; at the very least, there is no commodity production in the sphere of production (i.e. no selling of labor power because labor power has ceased to be a commodity).

Look what Marx says in the very beginning of Capital, Vol. II:

He wrote:

True, in the act M — L the owner of money and the owner of labour-power enter only into the relation of buyer and seller, confront one another only as money-owner and commodity-owner. In this respect they enter merely into a money-relation. Yet at the same time the buyer appears also from the outset in the capacity of an owner of means of production, which are the material conditions for the productive expenditure of labour-power by its owner. In other words, these means of production are in opposition to the owner of the labour-power, being property of another. On the other hand the seller of labour faces its buyer as labour-power of another which must be made to do his bidding, must be integrated into his capital, in order that it may really become productive capital. The class relation between capitalist and wage-laborer therefore exists, is presupposed from the moment the two face each other in the act M — L (L — M on the part of the laborer). It is a purchase and sale, a money-relation, but a purchase and sale in which the buyer is assumed to be a capitalist and the seller a wage-laborer. And this relation arises out of the fact that the conditions required for the realisation of labour-power, viz., means of subsistence and means of production, are separated from the owner of labour-power, being the property of another.

In a sentence: Exploitation and the sale of labor power are inseparable from each other. The end of exploitation ends the "commodity-ness" (commoditification?) of labor power and of all other goods, too. Without a market (and there is no market under socialism) it's superfluous to speak of commodities, anyway.

Dagoth wrote:

As to the Juche concept of a proletarian I am left with half-agreement half-disagreement. On the one hand they are 'Spiritually Proletarian' in that by fighting for liberation they are fighting for us. But they can still be bourgeoisie though if they still privately own a segment of the means of production and have not turned them over to the organization. I guess you could say I agree with the concept so long as the economic angle is not forgotten.

Ulrike Meinhof (of the Red Army Faction) addresses this. In one of her last texts, she defends her comrade-in-arms, Andreas Baader, from bourgeois accusations that he, as a "non-proletarian" can't be a guerilla fighter anyways.

She wrote:

Wunder's stupid thought, that Andreas supposedly never worked in a factory [...] is wrong. Andreas has learned and understood, in the factory, on the streets, in prison. It shows how psychological warfare tends to portray the RAF as a bunch of guys and girls from the upper middle class who were socialized bourgeois. If you really want to talk about sociology, it should be said that half of us do have a proletarian background - school, factory, nursing home, prison. This assertion [...] tries to negate the fact that all fighters of the RAF have learned and worked in the grass roots projects of the New Left since Easter of 1968. The fight itself proletarizes the fighters. This - freedom of property (she's talking about the fact that fighters typically don't own anything, just like any proletarian.) - is the understanding of the Korean party about the proletarian relation to the fight for communism: the Juche characterization of the proletariat as the antagonist of imperialism, this means, as the subject of liberation. This certainly isn't a sociological definition of the proletariat. But we're not interested in that. "Proletariat" is not a concept from the fascists' theory of descent - it describes a relation. The relation of the guerilla to the people describes the relation of the proletariat to the imperialist state, defined as deadly hostility, as antagonism, as class war. "Proletariat" is a fighting word.

She then goes on to quote Sartre:

He wrote:

It is true that the proletariat carries within itself the death of the bourgeoisie; it is true that the capitalist system is being destroyed by structural contradictions, but this does not necessarily imply the existence of a class consciousness or a class struggle. In order for there to be consciousness and struggle, somebody has to fight.

She goes on to explain:

Meinhof wrote:

But where does Wunder's assumption come from? Does he mean "Arbeit macht frei" (Labour will set you free - which was written above the entrance to Auschwitz) - that is, the concentration camp? Or does he mean the protestant work ethic, that is, quote, "labor as the source of all wealth and culture", an attitude from the Gotha Programme, with which [the social democrats] couldn't achieve anything during the big unemployment of 1930, except to hand over their political power [...] to the fascists? On this - on the mystified concept of labour of the Gotha Programme - Marx only said, frankly, that "the human being who does not own anything but his labour power must in all societal and cultural circumstances be the slave of the other people who have made themselves the owners of the concrete conditions of labour", from which Marx deduces the economical necessity and the political right of the workers to leave the factory, arm themselves and fight the state. And only for this we refer to Marx, because he scientifically justified the necessity of insurrection and the class struggle as class WAR against the parasitical network of repressive and ideological apparatuses, against the bourgeois state. All this babble is just cynical as there are more than 4 percent, respectively over a million unemployed in the Federal Republic and almost 5 million in Western Europe.

When the workers have left the factory, they surely aren't proletarians anymore from a socio-economical point of view. But it is a necessity for them to leave the factory, and with it, their socio-economical proletarian credentials, behind, to become revolutionaries, or subjects of liberation.

The simple fact is that being a revolutionary is a proletarian occupation. The bourgeoisie can join this occupation but they must cease to economically be bourgeoisie to do so.

As for socialism: our goal is to render a uni-class society that can eventually grow into classlessness. Socialism is not classlessness, it's the next step in rendering down classes into non-existence.

Exactly. If we assume for a moment is correct, if I, hypothetically speaking am the owner of a large weapons manufacturer in the west, that decides to sell its goods to North Korea where they will be used against the South or the United States in a future conflict, I'm now apparently a proletarian. Which is absurd.

Does this also mean all the big western contractors that got involved with soviet industrialisation in the 1930s were proletarians also?

Silly-ish question:

How do you pronounce it?

Choo-chay or Jew-chay.

Mabool wrote:

Juche postulates that there can be communism (for everybody according to their needs) under the dictatorship of the proletariat within the boundaries of the Korean nation.

Is there alot of difference between Juche and Stalinism? Because that description sounds a bit like socialism in one country, and the DPRK's government features alot of aspects similar to Stalin's USSR. I might be way off though.

Gulag wrote:

Is there alot of difference between Juche and Stalinism? Because that description sounds a bit like socialism in one country, and the DPRK's government features alot of aspects similar to Stalin's USSR. I might be way off though.

Juche is nationalist, Stalinism isn't. Juche is also in conflict with dialectical materialism (which is itself an integral part of Stalinism).

I'm not sure I get Juche anymore now than I did before. Interesting though.
I can see some parallels between Stalinist USSR and DPRK.
I hope you guys keep this thread up, I'd be interested in learning more about Juche.

Mabool wrote:

Guys. Read Marx.

Marxist economics is a critique of capitalist political economy. It is NOT a description of economic rules that is valid under every system. Marxist economics describes capitalism, perioid. Das Kapital contains no information WHATSOEVER that would be useful for socialist economics; that is one of the huge mistakes that socialist states have made in the past. The labor theory of value applies to capitalism. There is no value under socialism. There are no commodities under (developed) socialism; at the very least, there is no commodity production in the sphere of production (i.e. no selling of labor power because labor power has ceased to be a commodity).

Read Marx yourself.

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ ... a/ch01.htm

Part one, 3rd paragraph.

[/quote]Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.

Hence, equal right here is still in principle -- bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor. [/quote]