[KS] Juche Thought and "A true Marxist does not think in terms of Japanese or Korean..." 土種主義 vs 普遍主義

[Frank Hoffmann]

Dear All:

Rüdiger Frank wrote: 

>> My point, hidden behind too many words perhaps, was that chuch'e is  
>> more than just plain >nationalism or self-reliance. At its
>> core, it is the anti-thesis to Marxism and any other worldview that  
>> claims to have discovered objective laws of human development and  
>> society. This feature of chuch'e tends to be ignored by most of the  
>> literature. 

It seems that many here were saying or trying to make the point that  
something that would be an "anti-thesis" (your term points to a more  
scientific approach) needs to be concrete and to some degree  
verifiable, the same way that Marx provided verifiable economic data  
for his theses, which makes Marxism more than just a "worldview" (an  
economic theory, obviously, and a general development theory). If  
Kim's criticism would be that Marx' approach to provide "objective  
laws of human development and society" is something cannot work--a  
failure of "historical materialism" as an analytical tool--then North  
Korean Juche Theory would indeed need to provide a "theory" (not just  
'sasang' / thought) to counter that, a valid theory within the  
framework we live in in our modern rationale world, however incomplete  
that rationalization the age of enlightenment left us with still may  
be. If indeed there are no "objective laws of human development and  
society" then we are still left with a frame at the very heart of our  
modern life that demands a rational and verifiable explanation of that  
fact. Juche does for sure not provide that. As thus it is no "theory"  
whatsoever. In order to accept anything in "Juche Theory" (or better  
'sasang' / thought) we would have to talk outside of our own frame of  
rationalization, and that would really become a mystical and very  
obscure task. 

Furthermore, Kim Il Sung hardly had the intellectual capacity for  
theoretical thinking beyond rather simplistic levels. I am not too  
sure how much of Marx he understood and care to comprehend, but am  
certain that he was not able to come up with a critical analysis and a  
new theory coutering Marxism (based on a solid understanding of  
Marxism, I mean). Not a single of his writings or interviews points  
into that direction, or is there anything? The fact that he quickly  
developed pretty strong 'gut instincts' for ensuring his political  
power says nothing about his intellectual capabilities (but his  
writings do), and some are really necessary when we talk about  
Marxism, I fear. Balazs Szalontai, in today's posting, brought it to  
the point: "Kim Il Sung's so-called philosophical innovation was  
merely to subordinate philosophy to the needs and aspirations of  
political power, or, in other words, to incorporate the principle of  
absolute dictatorship into philosophical doctrine (...) which meant  
that economic laws and material incentives could be disregarded."

Another issue, as I already made in my chapter in Rüdiger Frank's  
_Exploring North Korean Arts_ book, is that Kim Il Sung was further  
appropriating and localizing Marxism. That again is nothing new  
either: Stalin and his helpers, e.g. Maxim Gorky for the cultural  
field, did exactly that for Soviet Russia in order to justify a  
revolution in a mostly agrarian state and for their party's power to  
succeed. They established the "non-West" right there in Russia,  
thereby enabling them to disregard the "rules and laws" that Marx had  
applied to "the West." To use a fashionable term U.S. historians  
focused on in the 1980s and 90s, and by now it has made its way to  
far-away places like Europe, Kim build his political "legacy" upon  
localizations (starting from around 1959/60), emphasizing that general  
physical rules valid elsewhere in the universe do not apply to Korea,  
where everything was so uniquely different. (Sorry about the irony,  
but you get my point.) And Kim Il Sung and his helpers then followed  
the exact same approach in Korea that Stalin had taken in the USSR,  
just distancing themselves from Euramerica AS WELL AS the Soviet  
Union, localizing Marxism further--so much so, that all that's left is  
Kim's chuch'e sasang., which, again, is not a theory, but a handbook  
of hidden Stalin quotes and my-mother-told-me-to-be-good wisdoms. (For  
details see my piece in Rüdiger's book just mentioned.)

Best, 
Frank