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Juche

Juche

The Juche Idea (pronounced // in Korean, approximately "joo-cheh") is the basic governing idea of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), and colloquially the political system based on that principle. The essence of Juche is the belief that the people, collectively, must be the subject and masters of social revolution. Juche is often translated (although not by North Korea itself) as "self-reliance".

Practical application

According to North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il, the application of Juche to policy produces the following principles:
- The people must have independence (Chajusong) in thought and politics, economic self-sufficiency, and self-reliance in defense
- Policy must reflect the will and aspirations of the masses and employ them fully in revolution and construction
- Methods of revolution and construction must be suitable to the situation of the country.
- The most important work of revolution and construction is molding people ideologically as communists and mobilizing them to constructive action. The Juche outlook requires loyalty to the revolutionary party and revolutionary leader. In North Korea these are the Korean Workers Party and Kim Jong-il. The Juche-influenced Chollima Movement of the 1960s (later known as Taean) describes the rapid development of the North Korean economy and growth to strengthen its independence from other nations.

Relation to socialism

The goal of revolution and construction under Juche is the establishment of socialism and communism. The North Korean government admits that Juche addresses questions previously considered in Marxism, but claims that it is a completely new ideology created by Kim Il-sung and does not depend on Marxism. In 1977 Juche replaced Marxism-Leninism in the country's constitution. Commentators outside North Korea often equate Juche with Stalinism and call North Korea's government Stalinist, but the government does not admit any connection between Juche and the ideas of Stalin.

Juche in other countries

During the Cold War North Korea promoted Juche as a guide for other countries, particularly third world countries, to build socialism. Romanian president Nicolae Ceauşescu became especially interested in Juche after a visit to North Korea and sought to base his program of Systematization on it. North Korea no longer promotes Juche in this manner and now teaches that Juche is only for Koreans. Juche study groups exist throughout the world. Members of these groups learn Juche and commemorate its discovery from time to time, but they are not involved in developing the idea further. The published work of Kim Il-sung is the final and complete expression of Juche, and Kim Jong-il is the ultimate interpreter of that work.

Juche calendar

The North Korean government and associated organisations use a variant of the Gregorian calendar with a "Juche" year based on 1912 A.D., the birthdate of Kim Il-sung, as year 1. Coincidentally, the year numbering is the same as that for the "Minguo" year numbering used in the Republic of China (Taiwan). Months are unchanged from those in the standard Gregorian calendar. There was no Juche Year zero. In many instances the Juche year is given after the A.D. year, for example 27 June 2005 Juche 94. In Korean texts, the Juche year is usually put in front of the corresponding A.D. year instead.

Reference

- Kim Jong-il: [http://www1.korea-np.co.jp/pk/062nd_issue/98092410.htm#4.%20THE%20GUIDING%20PRINCIPLES%20OF%20THE%20JUCHE%20IDEA On the Juche Idea]
- Colin Mackerras: "The Juche idea and the thougth of Kim Il Sung." In: Colin Mackerras, Nick Knight: Marxism in Asia (London, Croom Helm 1985; ISBN 0312518528), pp. 151-175.

External links

- [http://www.cnet-ta.ne.jp/juche/defaulte.htm The International Institute of the Juche Idea]
- [http://www.korea-dpr.com/users/jisge Juche Idea Study Group of England]
- [http://www.geocities.com/songunpoliticsstudygroup/ Songun Politics Study Group USA]
- [http://www.youngjuche.org Young Juche League UK]
- [http://yjl.proboards58.com Young Juche League forums]
- [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/suryong.htm Revolutionary View of the Leader] Category:Economy of North Korea Category:Korean terms Category:Political theories Category:Government of North Korea Category:Economic ideologies ko:주체사상 ja:主体思想

Democratic People's Republic of Korea

North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Korean: Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk; Hangul: 조선민주주의인민공화국), is a country in East Asia, covering the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Locally, it is more commonly called Pukchosŏn (북조선, "North Chosŏn"). (See Names of Korea.) North Korea is bordered by three countries. To the south along the DMZ, it borders South Korea, with which it had formed a single nation until 1948. Its northern border is predominantly with the People's Republic of China. Russia shares a 19 km border along the Tumen River in the far northeast corner of the country.

History

Japanese rule of Korea ended after World War II in 1945. Korea was occupied by the Soviet Union north of the 38th Parallel and by the United States south of the 38th parallel, but the United States and the Soviet Union were unable to agree on implementation of Joint Trusteeship over Korea. This led in 1948 to the establishment of separate governments in the north and south, each claiming to be the legitimate government over all of Korea. Growing tensions between the governments in the north and south eventually led to the Korean War, when on June 25 1950 the (North) Korean People's Army crossed the 38th Parallel and attacked. The war continued until July 27 1953, when the United Nations Command and Korean People's Army and the Chinese People's Volunteers signed the Korean War Armistice Agreement. The demilitarized zone, or DMZ separated the two countries. North Korea was governed from 1948 by Kim Il Sung until his death on July 8, 1994. After his death, his son Kim Jong Il was named General Secretary of the Korean Workers' Party on October 8, 1997. In 1998, the legislature reconfirmed him as Chairman of the National Defence Commission and declared that position as the "highest office of state." International relations generally improved, and there was a historic North-South summit in June 2000. However, tensions with the United States recently increased when North Korea resumed its nuclear weapons program. During Kim Jong Il's rule in the mid to late 1990s, the country's economy declined significantly, and food shortages developed in many areas. According to aid groups, millions of people in rural areas starved to death due to famine, exacerbated by a collapse in the food distribution system [http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engasa240032004]. Large numbers of North Koreans illegally entered the People's Republic of China in search of food. Hwang Jang Yop, International Secretary of the Korean Workers' Party, defected to South Korea in 1997. See also: History of Korea, Division of Korea

Politics

North Korea's government is dominated by the Korean Workers' Party (KWP), to which 80 percent of government officials belong. The KWP follows and upholds the ideology of Juche (self-reliance), which originally grew out of Stalinism. Like the former Soviet Union, North Korea is dominated by a party bureaucracy that claims to represent the will of the people. The KWP replaced mentions of Marxism-Leninism in the North Korean constitution with Juche in 1977. Communist critics of the KWP deny that it is a communist state. Minor political parties exist, but they are subordinated to the KWP and do not oppose its rule. In practice the exact power structure of the country is somewhat unclear, although it is commonly accepted that the nation's regime is a totalitarian dictatorship. Nominally, the Premier is the head of government, but real power lies with Kim Jong Il (the son of the deceased Kim Il Sung), head of the KWP and the military. Kim holds several official titles, the most important being General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, Chairman of the National Defense Commission and Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army. Within the country he is commonly known by the affectionate title of "Dear Leader". Similarly, his father, Kim Il Sung, held the title of "Great Leader." North Korea's 1972 constitution was amended in late 1992 and again in 1998. The 1998 constitution states that the late Kim Il Sung is "Eternal President of the Republic," and the post of president was abolished after his death. The Constitution gives much of the functions normally accorded to a head of state to the Supreme People's Assembly Presidium, whose president "represents the State" and receives credentials from foreign ambassadors. The government of the republic is led by the Prime Minister and, in theory, a super cabinet called the Central People's Committee (CPC), the government's top policymaking body. The CPC is headed by the President, who also nominates the other committee members. The CPC makes policy decisions and supervises the Cabinet, or State Administration Council (SAC). SAC is headed by a Premier and is the dominant administrative and executive agency. The parliament, the Supreme People's Assembly (Choego Inmin Hoeui), is the highest organ of state power. Its 687 members are elected every five years by popular vote. Usually it holds only two annual meetings, each lasting a few days, but it mostly ratifies decisions made by the ruling KWP (see rubberstamp (politics)). A standing committee elected by the Assembly performs legislative functions when the Assembly is not in session. See also: Foreign relations of North Korea, Military of North Korea, North Korea and weapons of mass destruction

Administrative divisions

North Korea and weapons of mass destruction As of 2005, North Korea consists of two Directly-Governed Cities (Chikhalsi; 직할시; 直轄市), three special regions with various designations, and nine Provinces (See provinces of Korea). (Names are romanized according to the McCune-Reischauer system as officially used in North Korea; the editor was also guided by the spellings used on the 2003 National Geographic map of Korea). For historical information, see provinces of Korea and special cities of Korea.

Directly-governed cities

- P'yŏngyang Directly-governed City (P'yŏngyang Chikhalsi; 평양 직할시; 平壤直轄市)
- Rasŏn (Rajin-Sŏnbong) Chikhalsi (라선 (라진-선봉) 직할시; 羅先 (羅津-先鋒) 直轄市)

Special regions

- Kaesŏng Industrial Region (Kaesŏng Kong-ŏp Chigu; 개성 공업 지구; 開城工業地區)
- Kŭmgangsan Tourist Region (Kŭmgangsan Kwangwang Chigu; 금강산 관광 지구; 金剛山觀光地區)
- Sinŭiju Special Administrative Region (Sinŭiju T'ŭkbyŏl Haengjŏnggu; 신의주 특별 행정구; 新義州特別行政區)

Provinces

- Chagang Province (Chagang-do; 자강도; 慈江道)
- North Hamgyŏng Province (Hamgyŏng-pukto; 함경 북도; 咸鏡北道)
- South Hamgyŏng Province (Hamgyŏng-namdo; 함경 남도; 咸鏡南道)
- North Hwanghae Province (Hwanghae-pukto; 황해 북도; 黃海北道)
- South Hwanghae Province (Hwanghae-namdo; 황해 남도; 黃海南道)
- Kangwŏn Province (Kangwŏndo; 강원도; 江原道)
- North P'yŏngan Province (P'yŏngan-pukto; 평안 북도; 平安北道)
- South P'yŏngan Province (P'yŏngan-namdo; 평안 남도; 平安南道)
- Ryanggang Province (Ryanggang-do; 량강도; 兩江道--sometimes also spelled as 'Yanggang' in English)

Major cities

- Sinuiju
- Kaesong
- Nampho
- Chongjin
- Wonsan
- Hamhung - Hamnam
- Haeju
- Kanggye
- Hyesan See also Cities of North Korea

Geography

North Korea is on the northern portion of the Korean Peninsula that extends 1,100 km from the Asian mainland. North Korea shares its borders with three nations and two seas. To the west it borders the Yellow Sea and the Korea Bay and to the east it borders the Sea of Japan (East Sea of Korea). North Korea borders South Korea, China, and Russia. The highest point in Korea is the Paektu-san at 2,744 m and major rivers include the Tumen and the Yalu. The local climate is relatively temperate, with precipitation heavier in summer during a short rainy season called jangma, and winters that can be bitterly cold on occasion. North Korea's capital and largest city is P'yŏngyang; other major cities include Kaesŏng in the south, Sinŭiju in the northwest, Wŏnsan and Hamhŭng in the east and Ch'ŏngjin in the northeast. See also: Korean Peninsula

Economy

Korean Peninsula North Korea's economy has stagnated since the 1970s. The government refuses to release economic data, hence limiting the amount of reliable information available. Publicly owned industry produces nearly all manufactured goods. The government continues to focus on heavy military industry. The government is [http://geography.about.com/library/cia/blcnorthkorea.htm estimated] to spend around 25% (2005) of the nation's GDP on the military. The 1990s saw a series of natural disasters, political mismanagement crises and corruption scandals. This, along with the collapse of the Soviet bloc; has caused significant economic disruption. The agricultural outlook is poor, and some food products are deliberately diverted away from citizens and into the military. The combined effects of a reclusive regime, serious fertilizer shortages, and structural constraints — such as little arable land and a short growing season — have resulted in a shortfall of staple grain output of more than 1 million tons from what the country needs to meet internationally-accepted minimum requirements. [http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2005/s1479934.htm Recent evidence] suggests serious food shortages. North Korea has previously (and may in the future) received international food and fuel aid from China, South Korea, and the United States in exchange for promises not to develop nuclear weapons. In June 2005, the U.S. announced that it would give 50,000 metric tons of food aid to North Korea. The United States gave North Korea 50,000 tons in 2004 and 100,000 tons in 2003. On 19 September 2005, North Korea was promised food and fuel aid (among other things) from South Korea, the U.S., Japan, Russia, and China in exchange for abandoning its nuclear weapons program and rejoining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It remains to be seen if this exchange will actually occur. The agreement was less than one day old before issues arose with its implementation. In July 2002, North Korea started experimenting with capitalism in the Kaesŏng Industrial Region. A small number of other areas have been designated as Special Administrative Regions, including Sinŭiju along the China-North Korea border. Mainland China and South Korea are the biggest trade partners of North Korea, with trade with China increasing 38% to $1.02 billion in 2003, and trade with South Korea increasing 12% to $724 million in 2003. It is reported that the number of mobile phones in P'yŏngyang rose from only 3,000 in 2002 to approximately 20,000 during 2004. As of June 2004, however, mobile phones became forbidden again. A small amount of capitalistic elements are gradually spreading from the trial area, including a number of advertising billboards along certain highways. Recent visitors have reported that the amount of open-air farmer markets have increased in Kaesong, P'yŏngyang, as well as the China-North Korea border, bypassing the food rationing system. See also: List of North Korean companies, Communications in North Korea, Transportation in North Korea

Human rights

[http://web.amnesty.org/library/eng-prk/index Amnesty International] and other human rights organizations accuse North Korea of having one of the worst human rights records of any nation, severely restricting most freedoms, including freedom of speech and freedom of movement, both inside the country and abroad. Japanese television aired what it said was [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4397847/ footage of a prison camp]. The U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea believes these camps hold between 150,000 and 200,000 inmates, and published a defector statement that pregnant women inside these camps reputedly either have forced abortions or the newborn child is killed ([http://ncafe.com/northkorea/SunOkLeeTestimony_w_llus.pdf] [PDF], [http://hrnk.org/hiddengulag/toc.html]). In some of the camps, former inmates say the annual mortality rate approaches 25% ([http://www.hrnk.org], [http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3071466]). A former prison guard and army intelligence officer [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/3436701.stm told the BBC] that in one camp, chemical weapons were tested on prisoners in a gas chamber. None of these claims can be verified, as North Korea denies them and does not grant entry to independent human rights observers. Less often discussed are the human rights implications of North Korea's famine, which killed between 600,000 ([http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/11.13/13-koreaeat.html]) and 3.5 million people ([http://217.29.194.251/msfinternational/invoke.cfm?objectid=335007FE-29B7-4E69-B88BBDF0379FFE1A&component=toolkit.article&method=full_html&CFID=5514940&CFTOKEN=15148554] ), mostly during the 1990 s ([http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9808/19/nkorea.famine]). By 1999, food and development aid reduced famine deaths, but North Korea's continuing nuclear program led to a decline in foreign aid. In the spring of 2005, the World Food Program reported that famine conditions were in imminent danger of returning to North Korea ([http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4072280.stm]), and the government was reported to have mobilized millions of city-dwellers to help rice farmers ([http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20810F6345D0C728CDDAF0894DD404482]).

Demographics

North Korea's population is one of the most ethnically and linguistically homogenous in the world, with very small Chinese and Japanese communities as the only non-Korean indigenous minorities. Most others are temporary residents, mostly being Russians and other East Europeans, Chinese, and Vietnamese. The Korean language is not a member of a wider linguistic family, though links to Japanese and Altaic languages are being considered. The Korean writing system, Hangul, was invented in the 15th century by King Se Jong the Great to replace the system of Chinese characters, known in Korea as Hanja, which are no longer officially in use in the North. North Korea continues to use the McCune-Reischauer romanization of Korean, in contrast to the South's revised version.

Religion

Religious activity is suppressed by the officially atheist state, especially Protestantism, which is seen as closely connected to the U.S. North Korea shares with South Korea a Buddhist and Confucianist heritage and recent history of Christian and Chondogyo ("Heavenly Way") movements. Pyongyang was the center of Christian activity before the Korean War. Today two state-sanctioned churches exist, which Christian advocates allege are mere show-cases for foreigners. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4431321.stm]

Culture

There is a vast personality cult around Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, and much of North Korea's literature, popular music, theater, and film glorify the two men. In July 2004, the Complex of Koguryo Tombs was the first site in North Korea to be included into the UNESCO list of World Heritage. See also: Culture of Korea, Korean cuisine, Music of Korea, Public holidays in North Korea

Tourism

In principle, any person is allowed to travel to North Korea, and among those who actually go through the complex application process, almost no one is refused entry by North Korea. Visitors are not allowed to travel outside designated tour areas without their Korean guides. Accounts of travels throughout the region can be found in the external links section. Tourists are not permitted on passports from the United States, although exceptions have been made in 1995, 2002 and 2005. Citizens of South Korea require special government permission from both governments to enter North Korea. In 2002, the area around Mount Kŭmgang, a scenic mountain close to the South Korea border, has been designated as a special tourist destination (Kŭmgangsan Tourist Region), where South Korean citizens do not need special permissions. Tours run by private companies bring thousands of South Koreans to Mount Kŭmgang every year. In July 2005 the South Korean company Hyundai Group came to an agreement with the North Korean government to open up more areas to tourism, including Mount Paektu and Kaesong.

Miscellaneous topics

- Korean friendship association
- Kimjongilia (national flower)

References

# Kang Chol-Hwan, The Aquariums of Pyongyang (New York: Basic Books, 2001) 146.

External links

-
- [http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=19 "Think Again: The Korea Crisis"] from Foreign Policy Magazine
- [http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/north_korea_2686.jsp A gulag with nukes: inside North Korea] by Jasper Becker
- [http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-fg-extreme11nov11,0,899396.story?track=hpmostemailedlink Bizarre Trip of a Lifetime] from the Los Angeles Times, about a group of American "extreme travelers" who visited North Korea in the fall of 2005

North Korean organizations

- Chongryon

Links associated with North Korean government

- [http://www.korea-dpr.com/library/201.pdf Kim Il Sung]: 10 Point programme for reunification of the country
- [http://www.korea-dpr.com/ korea-dpr.com] - Website officially associated with North Korea. (Maintained from a Texas server by the Korean Friendship Association.)
- [http://www.kcckp.net/en/ Naenara] ("My country," in Korean) DPRK's Official Web Portal
- [http://www.kcna.co.jp The Korean Central News Agency, The DPRK's news service.]

Web sites about North Korea

- [http://www.seoultrain.com "Seoul Train" documentary] A critically acclaimed PBS documentary on North Korean refugees (Incite Productions)
- [http://www.nkzone.org/nkzone North Korean Zone], a blog dealing with news related to North Korea]
- [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/kn.html CIA World Factbook - North Korea]
- [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/kptoc.html Library of Congress - Country Studies: North Korea] - data as of June 1993
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/country_profiles/1131421.stm BBC News - Country Profile: North Korea]
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/asia_pac_unseen_north_korea/html/1.stm BBC News - In pictures: Unseen North Korea]
- [http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/0,2759,331519,00.html Guardian Unlimited - Special Report: North and South Korea]
- [http://www.simonbone.com/myohyang.html Happy Birthday, North Korea] - detailed account of travel to 3 sanctioned areas
- [http://uk.geocities.com/hkgalbert/kpmap.htm Korean Tourist Map]
- [http://search.looksmart.com/p/browse/us1/us317916/us559898/us559967/us559991/ LookSmart - North Korea] directory category
- [http://www.nkzone.org/nkzone NKzone] - discussions and information exchange on North Korea
- [http://mapage.noos.fr/jeejee/north_korea.html North Korea Resources] - background news and analysis of North Korea
- [http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/North_Korea/ Open Directory Project - North Korea] directory category
- [http://www.pyongyang-metro.com/ Pyongyang Metro System Unofficial Web Site - 1]
- [http://www.koryogroup.com Tours / Tourism page of North Korea, with links to other North Korea related sites]
- [http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-fg-chongjin4jul04,1,1445590.story?ctrack=1&cset=true Trading Ideals for Sustenance] Second part of Los Angeles Times expose on changing North Korean life (July 4, 2005)
- [http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/Korea__North/ Yahoo! - North Korea] directory category
- [http://news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl=fc&in=World&cat=North_Korea Yahoo! News - Full Coverage: North Korea]
- [http://times.discovery.com/convergence/insidenorthkorea/video/video.html Children of a Secret State]: Human rights of children in North Korea (Discovery Channel)
- [http://www.voanews.com/english/north_korea_reporters_notebook.cfm North Korea: A Reporter's Notebook] — Luis Ramirez (Voice of America)

Web sites criticizing North Korea

- [http://freekorea.blogspot.com One Free Korea] - Blog focusing on human rights conditions in North Korea
- [http://times.hankooki.com/special/special_edition1_list.htm Another Korea] - Background stories on North Korea
- [http://www.soonoklee.org/freenk.cgi Soon Ok Lee project] - website calling for Christian solidarity with Korean refugees.
- [http://www.dailynk.com/english/index.php Daily NK] - North Korea focused daily online newspaper
- [http://www.chosunjournal.com/ ChosunJournal] - website focused on DPRK human rights
- [http://nkhumanrights.or.kr/NKHR_new/index_eng_new.htm Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights] - Witness accounts of refugees Category:East Asian countries zh-min-nan:Tiâu-sián ko:조선민주주의인민공화국 ms:Korea Utara ja:朝鮮民主主義人民共和国 simple:North Korea th:ประเทศเกาหลีเหนือ

Kim Jong-il

Kim Jong-il (born February 16, 1941) is Chairman of the National Defense Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), Supreme Commander of the (North) Korean People's Army, and General Secretary of the Korean Workers' Party (a Communist party which has controlled the country since 1945).

Birth and education

Like his father Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il is the center of a very extensive personality cult within North Korean society, in which Kim is constantly praised and honored as a hero, great statesman, and a "peerlessly great man". As a result, many official facts regarding his early life are inconsistent with outside sources. Kim Jong-il's official biography states that he was born at Mount Paektu in northern Korea on February 15, 1942. South Korean sources believe he was born on February 16, 1941, and that subsequently his "official" birth year was adjusted so as to be in harmony in terms of decades with that of his father, Kim Il-sung. During his youth in the Soviet Union he was known as Yuri Irsenowich Kim, taking his patronymic from his father's russianized name, Ir-sen. According to Western and South Korean sources, Kim Jong-il was born in a small village of Viatskoe (or Viatsk), an army camp near Khabarovsk in the Soviet Union, where his father, Kim Il-sung, was both an important figure among Korean Communist exiles and a captain and battalion commander in the Soviet 88^th Brigade, which was made up of Chinese and Korean guerrillas. Kim Jong-il's mother was Kim Il-sung's first wife, Kim Jong-suk. Kim was a young child when World War II ended. His father returned to Pyongyang in September 1945, and in late November the younger Kim returned to Korea via a Soviet ship that landed at Unggi. The family moved into a former Japanese officer's mansion in Pyongyang, with a garden and pool. Kim Jong-il's brother Shura Kim (also known as the first Kim Pyong-il) drowned there in 1947. In 1948 Kim Jong-il began primary school. In 1949 his mother died during labour. Kim probably received most of his education in the People's Republic of China, where he was sent away from his father for greater safety during the Korean War. According to the official version, he graduated from Namsan School in Pyongyang, a special school for the children of communist party officials. He is later said to have attended Kim Il-sung University and to have majored in Political Economy, graduating in 1964. By the time of his graduation, his father, revered in the government's official pronouncements as "the Great Leader" (위대한 수령), had firmly consolidated control over the government. He is also said to have received English language education at the University of Malta in the early 1970s, on his infrequent holidays in Malta as guest of Maltese Prime Minister Dom Mintoff. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,866479,00.html] The elder Kim had meanwhile remarried and had another son, Kim Pyong-il. It is unclear if Jong-il was chosen over Pyong-il, or whether Pyong-il was ever seriously considered as successor by his father. Since 1988, Kim Pyong-il has served in a series of North Korean embassies in Europe and is currently the North Korean ambassador to Poland. It is suspected that Kim Pyong-il was exiled to these distant posts by Kim Il-sung in order to avoid a power struggle between his two sons.

Early political career

After graduating in 1964, Kim Jong-il began his ascension through the ranks of the ruling Korean Workers' Party, working first in the party's elite Organization Department before being named a member of the Politburo in 1968. In 1969 he was appointed deputy director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department. 1969 In 1973, Kim was made Party secretary of organization and propaganda, and in 1974, he was officially designated his father's successor. During the next 15 years, he accumulated further positions, among them Minister of Culture and head of party operations against South Korea. Kim gradually made his presence felt within the Korean Workers Party from the Seventh Plenum of the Fifth Central Committee in September 1973, leading the "Three Revolution Team" campaigns. He was often referred to as the "Party Center", due to his growing influence over the daily operations of the Party. By the time of the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980, Kim Jong-il's control of the Party operation was complete. He was given senior posts in the Politburo, the Military Commission and the party Secretariat. When he was made a member of the Seventh Supreme People's Assembly in February 1982, it had become clear to international observers that he was the heir apparent to succeed his father as the supreme leader of the DPRK. At this time Kim assumed the title "Dear Leader" (친애하는 지도자), and the government began building a personality cult around him patterned after that of his father, the "Great Leader". Kim Jong-il was regularly hailed by the media as the "peerless leader" and "the great successor to the revolutionary cause". He emerged as the most powerful figure behind his father in the DPRK. In 1991, Kim was also named supreme commander of the North Korean armed forces. Since the Army is the real foundation of power in North Korea, this was a vital step. It appears that the veteran Defense Minister, Oh Jin-wu, one of Kim Il-sung's most loyal subordinates, engineered Kim Jong-il's acceptance by the Army as the next leader of the North Korea, despite his lack of military service. The only other possible leadership candidate, Prime Minister Kim Il (no relation), was removed from his posts in 1976. In 1992, Kim Il-sung publicly stated that his son was in charge of all internal affairs in North Korea. By the 1980s, North Korea was in deep economic crisis as the economy stagnated, aggravated by Kim Il-sung's policy of juche (self-reliance), which cut the country off from almost all external trade, even with its traditional partners, the Soviet Union and China. South Korea accused Kim of ordering the 1983 bombing in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar), which killed 17 visiting South Korean officials, including four cabinet members, and another in 1987 which killed all 115 on board Korean Air Flight 858. No direct evidence has emerged to link Kim to the bombings. A North Korean agent, Kim Hyon Hui, confessed to planting a bomb in the case of the second.

"Highest post of the state"

Kim Hyon Hui] Kim Il-sung died in 1994 age 82, and Kim Jong-il assumed control of the Party and state apparatus. Although the post of President was left vacant, and appears to have been abolished in deference to the memory of Kim Il-sung, Kim took the titles of General Secretary of the Party and chairman of the National Defense Commission, the real center of power in North Korea. In 1998 this position was declared to be "the highest post of the state", so Kim may be regarded as North Korean head of state from that date. The state-controlled economy continued to stagnate throughout the 1990s, as a result of poor industrial and agricultural productivity, the loss of guaranteed markets following the fall of the Soviet Union and the introduction of a market economy in China, and the state's continued large expenditures on armaments, probably the highest relative to the size of the economy of any country in the world. By 2000, there were frequent reports from reliable sources (such as the UN) of famine in all parts of North Korea except Pyongyang. North Korean citizens ran increasingly desperate risks to escape from the country, mainly into China. On the domestic front, Kim has given occasional signs that he favors economic reforms similar to those carried out in China by Deng Xiaoping, and on visits to China he has expressed admiration for China's economic progress. In 2002 Kim Jong-il declared that "money should be capable of measuring the worth of all commodities" [http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0602/p07s02-woap.html]. North Korea has begun limited market experimentation. In the time span coinciding with Kim Dae-jung's visit to the North (see the section on international affairs below), North Korea introduced a number of economic changes, including price and wage increases. Some analysts said that these measures were designed to lift production and rein in the black market. Kim has announced plans to import and develop new technologies and ambitions to develop North Korea's fledgling software industry. Kaesong Industrial Park is being developed just north of the border, with the planned participation of 250 South Korean companies, employing 100,000 North Koreans, by 2007. North Korea does not seem to be in imminent danger of collapse, despite its international and economic difficulties. Trade with China nearly doubled between 2002 and 2004 to US$1.39 billion [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/11/AR2005051100527_2.html]. Kim's possible successor is a continuing topic of speculation. South Korean media have suggested that he is grooming his son, Kim Jong-chul. His eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, was earlier believed to be the designated heir, but he appears to have fallen out of favour after being arrested in New Tokyo International Airport (now Narita International Airport) in Narita, Japan, near Tokyo, in 2001 while traveling on a forged passport. On April 22 2004 a large explosion occurred at the Ryongchŏn train station several hours after a train passed through the station returning Kim from his visit to China. The Red Cross reported at least 150 people were killed and 1,249 were injured in the disaster. Initially, North Korea said that the explosion was caused by an electrical fault; however, the South Korean media reports that there is evidence to suggest the incident may have been an assassination attempt. It is difficult to confirm or refute this possibility. In November 2004, the ITAR-TASS news agency published reports that unnamed foreign diplomats in Pyongyang had observed the removal of portraits of Kim Jong-il around the country. The North Korean government has vigorously denied these reports. Radiopress, the Japanese radio monitoring agency, reported later that month that North Korean media has stopped referring to Kim by the honorific "dear leader" (위대한 령도자) and that instead Korean Central Television, the Korean Central News Agency and other media have been describing him simply as "general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, chairman of the DPRK National Defense Commission, and supreme commander of the Korean People's Army". It is unclear whether the possible curtailing of Kim's personality cult indicates a struggle within the North Korean leadership or whether it is a deliberate attempt by Kim to moderate his image in the outside world.

International affairs

personality cult]] Kim Jong-il's government has made some efforts to improve relations with South Korea, and the election of Kim Dae-jung as South Korean president in 1997 created an opportunity for negotiations. In June 2000 the two leaders held a summit meeting, the first such meeting. But the two sides were subsequently unable to agree on any substantial (as opposed to symbolic) improvement in their relations. (For additional details on the June 2000 summit between the leaders of the two Koreas, see Sunshine Policy.) Kim's relationship with the United States has been equally difficult. During the Clinton administration, U.S. and North Korea signed the Agreed Framework, under which North Korea would stop its existing plutonium processing program in exchange for a light-water reactor paid mostly by South Korea and fuel shipments by the U.S. In part because of U.S. Congressional opposition, construction of the light-water reactors fell behind schedule and delivery of the fuel oil was often late. [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/etc/cron.html]. The administration of George W. Bush adopted a tougher stance toward North Korea, accusing it of violating the spirit of the Agreed Framework by developing a secret uranium program. Bush declared North Korea to be part of the "Axis of Evil" along with Iran and Iraq. In December 2002, the U.S. stopped shipment of fuel it was providing under the Agreed Framework. On January 10, 2003, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty The Chinese government has attempted to mediate between North Korea and the United States. In April 2004 Kim paid an "unofficial visit" to Beijing (though news of the visit leaked out) and met with Chinese leaders who tried to persuade him that a U.S. invasion of North Korea was unlikely and that he should give up the country's nuclear weapons program. See also: North Korea and weapons of mass destruction
Personal life
Kim is married to Kim Young-suk, although they have been estranged for some years. He has a daughter, Kim Sul-song (born 1974), by her. His eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, was born to Song Hye-rim in 1971. His most recent partner (described sometimes as a mistress, sometimes as a wife) was Ko Young-hee, with whom he had another son, Kim Jong-chul, in 1981, and there is reported to be a second son, Kim Jong-un (name also spelled "Jong Woon" or "Jong Woong"). In August 2004, the Western media reported that Ko had recently died at the age of 51 from cancer. Kim is said to be a film fan, owning a collection of some 20,000 video tapes [http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/01/08/wbr.kim.jong.il/] as well as reportedly writing the infamous B-movie Pulgarsari. However, Kim himself has said he rarely watches movies. He reportedly enjoys following National Basketball Association games. Madeleine Albright ended her summit with Kim by presenting him with a basketball signed by Michael Jordan. Like his father, he has a profound fear of flying, and has always travelled by private train for state visits to Russia and China. He also sometimes wears lifts and platform shoes (he is 160 cm, or five foot three inches tall). Before 1994, Kim Jong-il was frequently accused of dishonesty, drunkenness, sexual excess of various kinds and even insanity, particularly in the South Korean press. Many of these accusations are now known to have been fabricated by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) of South Korea. Some of these stories come from North Korean defectors, which may or may not be credible, and may be exaggerated by Western media and governments. Kim Jong Il was satirized in the U.S. movie Team America: World Police. Kim is reported to have fathered as many as nine additional illegitimate children. [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/leadership-succession.htm]
Notes
# [http://www.theage.com.au/news/North-Korea/North-Koreas-dear-leader-less-dear/2004/11/18/1100748136912.html www.theage.com.au] November 19 2004. "North Korea's dear leader less dear" # New York Times October 25 2000. "Albright Reports Progress in Talks with North Korea"
See also

- List of Korea-related topics
Further reading

- Michael Breen, Kim Jong-Il: North Korea's Dear Leader, John Wiley and Sons (January, 2004), hardcover, 228 pages, ISBN 0470821310
- Bradley Martin, Under The Loving Care Of The Fatherly Leader: North Korea And The Kim Dynasty, St. Martins (October, 2004), hardcover, 868 pages, ISBN 0312322216
- Kenji Fujimoto. I Was Kim Jong Il's Cook. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61550-2004Mar15?language=printer]
External links

- [http://www.korea-dpr.com/library/103.pdf Kim Jong Il: Brief History] – Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang DPR Korea (1998)
- [http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200406/kt2004060817432954140.htm Born in the USSR] – Kim Jong-Il's childhood.
- [http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/FK20Dg01.html The case of Kim Jong-il's missing portraits] analysis by Kosuke Takahashi (November 20, 2004)
- [http://www.east-asia-intel.com/eai/Sample/2.html The many family secrets of Kim Jong Il]
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1907197.stm BBC Profile of Kim Jong-Il]
- [http://www.youngjuche.org Young Juche League]
- [http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=1643 "Hidden Daughter" Visits Kim Jong-Il Every Year (also includes photos of Kim during his youth]
- [http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/FI02Dg01.html Death of Kim's consort: Dynastic implications]
- [http://news.naver.com/news/read.php?mode=LSD&office_id=047&article_id=0000073978§ion_id=100&menu_id=100 Kim's family tree] Kim Jong-il Category:North Korean politicians Category:Field Marshals Kim Jong-il Category:Government of North Korea zh-min-nan:Kim Chèng-ji̍t ko:김정일 ja:金正日 simple:Kim Jong-il

Self sufficiency

Self-sufficiency refers to the state of not requiring any outside aid, support, or (in hardline cases) interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of extreme personal autonomy. Self-sufficiency is usually applied to varieties of sustainable living in which nothing is consumed outside of what is produced by the self-sufficient individuals. Examples of attempts at self-sufficiency in North America include voluntary simplicity, Luddism, homesteading, survivalism, and the Back to the land movement. Practices that enable or aid self-sufficiency include autonomous building, permaculture, sustainable agriculture, and renewable energy. The existence of an effectively closed system makes self-sufficiency a necessity for any form of space colonization. An extreme experimental example of self-sufficiency could therefore be said to be the Biosphere 2 project. The term is also applied to more limited forms of self-sufficiency, for example growing one's own food or becoming economically independent of state subsidies or (in the case of larger political entities) foreign aid. Category:Sustainability

External links

- [http://www.fssca.net/ Foundation for Self-Sufficiency in Central America]

Communism

:This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. For issues regarding Communist organizations, see the Communist party article. For issues regarding Communist Party-run states, see Communist state. Communism refers to a theoretical system of social organization and a political movement based on common ownership of the means of production. As a political movement, communism seeks to establish a classless society. A major force in world politics since the early 20th century, modern communism is generally associated with The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, according to which the capitalist profit-based system of private ownership is replaced by a communist society in which the means of production are communally owned, such as through a gift economy. Often this process is said initiated by the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie (see Marxism), passes through a transitional period marked by the preparatory stage of socialism (see Leninism). Pure communism has never been implemented, it remains theoretical: communism is, in Marxist theory, the end-state, or the result of state-socialism. The word is now mainly understood to refer to the political, economic, and social theory of Marxist thinkers, or life under conditions of Communist party rule. In the late 19th century, Marxist theories motivated socialist parties across Europe, although their policies later developed along the lines of "reforming" capitalism, rather than overthrowing it. The exception was the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party. One branch of this party, commonly known as the Bolsheviks and headed by Vladimir Lenin, succeeded in taking control of the country after the toppling of the Provisional Government in the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1918, this party changed its name to the Communist Party; thus establishing the contemporary distinction between communism and socialism. After the success of the October Revolution in Russia, many socialist parties in other countries became communist parties, owing allegiance of varying degrees to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (see Communist International). After World War II, regimes calling themselves communist took power in Eastern Europe. In 1949 the Communists in China, led by Mao Zedong, came to power and established the People's Republic of China. Among the other countries in the Third World that adopted a Communist form of government at some point were Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Angola, and Mozambique. By the early 1980s, almost one-third of the world's population lived under Communist states. Communism never became a popular ideology in the United States, either before or after the establishment of the Communist Party USA in 1919. Since the early 1970s, the term "Eurocommunism" was used to refer to the policies of Communist Parties in Western Europe, which sought to break with the tradition of uncritical and unconditional support of the Soviet Union. Such parties were politically active and electorally significant in France and Italy. With the collapse of the Communist governments in Eastern Europe from the late 1980s and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Communism's influence has decreased dramatically in Europe, but around a quarter of the world's population still lives under Communist Party rule.

Marxism

Like other socialists, Marx and Engels sought an end to capitalism and the exploitation of workers. But whereas earlier socialists often favored longer-term social reform, Marx and Engels believed that popular revolution was all but inevitable, and the only path to socialism. According to the Marxist argument for communism, the main characteristic of human life in class society is alienation; and communism is desirable because it entails the full realization of human freedom. Marx here follows G.W.F. Hegel in conceiving freedom not merely as an absence of constraints but as action having moral content. Not only does communism allow people to do what they want but it puts humans in such conditions and such relations with one another that they would not wish to have need for exploitation. Whereas for Hegel, the unfolding of this ethnical life in history is mainly driven by the realm of ideas, for Marx, communism emerged from material, especially the development of the means of production. Marxism holds that a process of class conflict and revolutionary struggle will result in victory for the proletariat and the establishment of a communist society in which private ownership is abolished over time and the means of production and subsistence belong to the community. Marx himself wrote little about life under communism, giving only the most general indication as to what constituted a communist society. It is clear that it entails abundance in which there is little limit to the projects that humans may undertake. In the popular slogan that was adopted by the communist movement, communism was a world in which 'each gave according to his abilities, and received according to his needs.' The German Ideology (1845) was one of Marx's few writings to elaborate on the communist future: :In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm] Marx's lasting vision was to add this vision to a positive scientific theory of how society was moving in a law-governed way toward communism, and, with some tension, a political theory that explained why revolutionary activity was required to bring it about. Some of Marx's contemporaries, such as Mikhail Bakunin, espoused similar ideas, but differed in their views of how to reach to a harmonic society with no classes. To this day there has been a split in the workers movement between Marxists (communists) and anarchists. The anarchists are against, and wish to abolish, every state organisation. Among them, anarchist-communists such as Peter Kropotkin believed in an immediate transition to one society with no classes, while anarcho-syndicalists believe that labor unions, as opposed to Communist parties, are the organizations that can help usher this society.

The growth of modern Communism

Soviet Marxism

In Russia, the modern world's first effort to build socialism or communism on a large scale, following the 1917 October Revolution, led by Lenin's Bolsheviks, raised significant theoretical and practical debates on communism among Marxists themselves. Marx's theory had presumed that revolutions would occur where capitalist development was the most advanced and where a large working class was already in place. Russia, however, was the poorest country in Europe, with an enormous, illiterate peasantry and little industry. Under these circumstances, it was necessary for the communists, according to Marxian theory, to create a working class itself. Nevertheless, some socialists believed that a Russian revolution could be the precursor of workers' revolutions in the west. For this reason, the socialist Mensheviks had opposed Lenin's communist Bolsheviks in their demand for socialist revolution before capitalism had been established. In seizing power, the Bolsheviks found themselves without a program beyond their pragmatic and politically successful slogans "peace, bread, and land," which had tapped the massive public desire for an end to Russian involvement in the First World War and the peasants' demand for land reform. The usage of the terms "communism" and "socialism" shifted after 1917, when the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Communist Party and installed a single-party regime devoted to the implementation of socialist policies. The revolutionary Bolsheviks broke completely with the non-revolutionary social democratic movement, withdrew from the Second International, and formed the Third International, or Comintern, in 1919. Henceforth, the term "Communism" was applied to the objective of the parties founded under the umbrella of the Comintern. Their program called for the uniting of workers of the world for revolution, which would be followed by the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat as well as the development of a socialist economy. Ultimately, their program held, there would develop a harmonious classless society, with the withering away of the state. In the early 1920s, the Soviet Communists formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union, from the former Russian Empire. Following Lenin's democratic centralism, the Communist parties were organized on a hierarchical basis, with active cells of members as the broad base; they were made up only of elite cadres approved by higher members of the party as being reliable and completely subject to party discipline. In 1918-1920, in the middle of the Russian Civil War, the new regime nationalized all productive property. When mutiny and peasant unrest resulted, Lenin declared the New Economic Policy (NEP). However, Joseph Stalin's personal fight for leadership spelled the end of the NEP, and he used his control over personnel to abandon the program. The Soviet Union and other countries ruled by Communist Parties are often described as 'Communist states' with 'state socialist' economic bases. This usage indicates that they proclaim that they have realized part of the socialist program by abolishing private control of the means of production and establishing state control over the economy; however, they do not declare themselves truly communist, as they have not established communal ownership.

Stalinism

The Stalinist version of socialism, with some important modifications, shaped the Soviet Union and influenced Communist Parties worldwide. It was heralded as a possibility of building communism via a massive program of industrialization and collectivization. The rapid development of industry, and above all the victory of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, maintained that vision throughout the world, even around a decade following Stalin's death, when the party adopted a program in which it promised the establishment of communism within thirty years. However, under Stalin's leadership, evidence emerged that dented faith in the possibility of achieving communism within the framework of the Soviet model. Stalin had created in the Soviet Union a repressive state that dominated every aspect of life. After Stalin's death, the Soviet Union's new leader, Nikita Khrushchev admitted the enormity of the repression that took place under Stalin. Later, growth declined, and rent-seeking and corruption by state officials increased, which dented the legitimacy of the Soviet system. Despite the activity of the Comintern, the Soviet Communist Party adopted the Stalinist theory of "socialism in one country" and claimed that, due to the "aggravation of class struggle under socialism," it was possible, even necessary, to build socialism in one country alone. This departure from Marxist internationalism was challenged by Leon Trotsky, whose theory of "permanent revolution" stressed the necessity of world revolution.

Trotskyism

Trotsky and his supporters organized into the "Left Opposition," and their platform became known as Trotskyism. But Stalin eventually succeeded in gaining full control of the Soviet regime, and their attempts to remove Stalin from power resulted in Trotsky's exile from the Soviet Union in 1929. After Trotsky's exile, world communism fractured in two distinct branches: Stalinism and Trotskyism. Trotsky later founded the Fourth International, a Trotskyist rival to the Comintern, in 1938. Though some follow Trotskyism today, Trotsky's theories were never reaccepted in Communist circles in the Soviet bloc, even after Stalin's death; and Trotsky's interpretation of communism has not been successful in leading a political revolution that would overthrow a state. However, Trotskyist ideas have occasionally found an echo among political movements in countries experiencing social upheavals (such is the case of Alan Woods' Trotskyist Committee for a Marxist International, which has had contact with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela), most parties are active in politically stable, developed countries (such as Great Britain, France, Spain and Germany). It is noteworthy that Trotskyists groups that contribute with pro-capitalist parties have not escaped criticism as opportunists from other Trotskyists which are loathe to do so (see Trotskyism).

Cold War years

As the Soviet Union won important allies by victory in the Second World War in Eastern Europe, communism as a movement spread to a number of new countries, and gave rise to a few different branches of its own, such as Maoism. Communism had been vastly strengthened by the winning of many new nations into the sphere of Soviet influence and strength in Eastern Europe. Governments modeled on Soviet Communism were formed in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania. A Communist government was also created under Marshal Tito in Yugoslavia, but Tito's independent policies led to the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform, which had replaced the Comintern, and Titoism, a new branch in the world communist movement, was labeled "deviationist." By 1950 the Chinese Communists held all of China except Taiwan, thus controlling the most populous nation in the world. Other areas where rising Communist strength provoked dissension and in some cases actual fighting include Laos, many nations of the Middle East and Africa, and, especially, Vietnam (see Vietnam War). With varying degrees of success, Communists attempted to unite with nationalist and socialist forces against Western imperialism in these poor countries.

Maoism

After the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet Union's new leader, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced Stalin's crimes and his cult of personality. He called for a return to the principles of Lenin, thus presaging some change in Communist methods. However, Khrushchev's reforms heightened ideological differences between China and the Soviet Union, which became increasingly apparent in the 1960s and 1970s. As the Sino-Soviet Split in the international Communist movement turned toward open hostility, Maoist China portrayed itself as a leader of the underdeveloped world against the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, with Maoism gaining recognition worldwide as a new branch of Marxism.

Collapse of the Soviet Union and Communism today

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union and relaxed central control, in accordance with reform policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The Soviet Union did not intervene as Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary all abandoned Communist rule by 1990. In 1991, the Soviet Union itself dissolved. By the beginning of the 21st century, Communist parties hold power in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. President Vladimir Voronin of Moldova is a member of the Communist Party of Moldova, but the country is not run under one-party leadership. However, China has reassessed many aspects of the Maoist legacy; and China, Laos, Vietnam, and, to a lesser degree, Cuba have reduced state control of the economy in order to stimulate growth. Communist parties, or their descendent parties, remain politically important in many European countries and throughout the Third World, particularly in India. Theories within Marxism as to why communism in Eastern Europe was not achieved after socialist revolutions pointed to such elements as the pressure of external capitalist states, the relative backwardness of the societies in which the revolutions occurred, and the emergence of a bureaucratic stratum or class that arrested or diverted the transition press in its own interests. Marxist critics of the Soviet Union referred to the Soviet system, along with other Communist states, as "state capitalism," arguing that Soviet system fell far short of Marx's communist ideal. They argued that the state and party bureaucratic elite acted as a surrogate capitalist class in the heavily centralized and repressive political apparatus. Non-Marxists, in contrast, have often applied the term to any society ruled by a Communist Party and to any party aspiring to create a society similar to such existing nation-states. In the social sciences, societies ruled by Communist Parties are distinct for their single party control and their socialist economic bases. While anticommunists applied the concept of "totalitarianism" to these societies, many social scientists identified possibilities for independent political activity within them, and stressed their continued evolution up to the point of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today, Marxist revolutionaries are active in India, Nepal, and Colombia.

"Communism" or "communism"?

According to the 1996 third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, communism and derived words are written with the lowercase "c" except when they refer to a political party of that name, a member of that party, or a government led by such a party, in which case the word "Communist" is written with the uppercase "C".

Criticism of communism

:Main article: Criticisms of communism. A diverse array of writers and political activists have published anticommunist work, such as Soviet bloc dissidents Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vaclav Havel; economists Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman; and historians and social scientists Hannah Arendt, Robert Conquest, Daniel Pipes and R. J. Rummel, to name a few. Some writers such as Conquest go beyond attributing large-scale human rights abuses to Communist regimes, presenting events occurring in these countries, particularly under Stalin, as an argument against the ideology of Communism itself. It should be noted that these are criticisms of Communist parties and states they have ruled, rather than criticisms of communism as such. It should also be noted that many Communist parties outside of the Warsaw Pact (i.e. Communist parties in Western Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa) differed greatly, therefore no single criticism fits all.

External links

Online resources for original Marxist literature

- [http://www.marxists.org Marxists Internet Archive]
- [http://www.libcom.org/library Libertarian Communist Library]
- [http://www.marxist.net Marxist.net]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm?title= Theses on Feuerbach]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm?title= Principles of Communism]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm?title= The Communist Manifesto]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm?title= The Civil War in France]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm?title= Socialism: Utopian and Scientific]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/deleon/works/1896/960126.htm Reform or Revolution?]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/index.htm?title= What is to be Done?]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1904/onestep/index.htm?title= One Step Forward, Two Steps Back]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/two-tact/index.htm?title= Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/index.htm?title= Materialism and Empirio-Criticism]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/index.htm?title= The Right of Nations to Self-Determination]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm?title= Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/index.htm?title= The State and Revolution]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/miliprog/index.htm?title= The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/index.htm?title= The Tasks of the Proletariat In Our Revolution] Category:Communism Category:Political theories Category:Society Category:Economic ideologies zh-min-nan:Kiōng-sán-chú-gī ko:공산주의 ms:Komunisme ja:共産主義 simple:Communism

Marxism

Marxism is the social theory and political practice based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. Marx drew on G.W.F. Hegel's philosophy, the political economy of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and theorists of 19th century French socialism, to develop a critique of society which he claimed was both scientific and revolutionary. This critique achieved its most systematic (albeit unfinished) expression in his masterpiece, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, more commonly known as Das Kapital. Since its inception and up to the present day, Marxism has been situated largely outside the political mainstream, although it has played a major role in history. Today, Marxist political parties of widely different sizes exist in most countries around the world, and Marxism continues to enjoy significant intellectual respect in many circles. Das Kapital Das Kapital Since Marx's death in 1883, various groups around the world have appealed to Marxism as the theoretical basis for their politics and policies, which have often proved to be dramatically different and conflicting. One of the first major political splits occurred between the advocates of 'reformism', who argued that the transition to socialism could occur within existing bourgeois parliamentarian frameworks, and communists, who argued that the transition to a socialist society required a revolution and the dissolution of the capitalist state. The 'reformist' tendency (later known as Social Democracy) came to be dominant in most of the parties affiliated to the Second International and these parties supported their own governments in World War One. This issue caused the communists to break away and form their own parties which became members of the Third International. The contemporary meanings of these terms was initially very different: Lenin, for example, was considered a social democrat until the mutation of the latter movement. Although there are still many Marxist revolutionary social movements and political parties around the world, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, relatively few countries have governments which describe themselves as Marxist. Although social democratic parties are in power in a number of Western nations, they long ago distanced themselves from their historical connections to Marx and his ideas. As of 2005, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, and the People's Republic of China had governments in power which describe themselves as socialist in the Marxist sense. However, the private sector comprised more than 50% of the Chinese economy by this time and the Vietnamese government had also partially liberalized its economy. The Laotian and Cuban states maintained strong control over the means of production. While Marx theorized that such a socialist phase would eventually give way to a classless society in which the state essentially ceases to exist and workers collectively own the means of production (communism), such a development has yet to occur in any historical self-claimed Communist state, often due to an initial authoritarian regime's unwillingness to relinquish the power it gained in revolution. These historically communist states have generally followed a socialist, command economy model without making a transition to this hypothetical final stage. North Korea is another contemporary Communist state, though the official ideology of the Korean Workers' Party (originally led by Kim Il-sung and currently chaired by his son, Kim Jong-il,) Juche, does not follow doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism as had been espoused by the leadership of the Soviet Union. Libya is often thought of as a socialist state; it maintained ties with the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc and Communist states during the Cold War. Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, the leader of Libya, describes the state's official ideology as Islamic socialism, and has labelled it a third way between capitalism and Marxism. Some libertarian members of the laissez-faire and individualist schools of thought believe the actions and principles of modern capitalist states or big governments can be understood as "Marxist". This point of view ignores the overall vision and general intent of Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto, for qualitative change to the economic system, and focuses on a few steps that Marx and Engels believed would occur, as workers emancipated themselves from the capitalist system, such as "Free education for all children in public schools". A few such reforms have been implemented — not by Marxists but in the forms of Keynesianism, the welfare state, new liberalism, social democracy and other minor changes to the capitalist system, in most capitalist states. To Marxists these reforms represent responses to political pressures from working-class political parties and unions, themselves responding to perceived abuses of the capitalist system. Further, in this view, many of these reforms reflect efforts to "save" or "improve" capitalism (without abolishing it) by coordinating economic actors and dealing with market failures. Further, although Marxism does see a role for a socialist "vanguard" government in representing the proletariat through a revolutionary period of indeterminate length, it sees an eventual lightening of that burden, a "withering away of the state."

The Hegelian roots of Marxism

market failure Marx's immensely rich and varied politico-theoretical preoccupations were initially influenced by his contact with Hegelian philosophy. Hegel proposed a form of idealism in which the progress of freedom is the guiding theme of human history. Freedom progresses by the development of ideas into their contraries. This process, dialectic, sometimes involves gradual accretion but at other times requires discontinuous leaps -- violent upheavals of previously existing status quo. World-historical figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte are, on the Hegelian reading, servants of a World Spirit whose Freedom has reconciled with the Necessity of History. Hegel's dialectical process included the personal as well as the natural, the ideal as well as the material. Marx did not study directly with Hegel, but after Hegel died Marx studied under one of Hegel's pupils, Bruno Bauer. Bauer was a leader of the circle of Young Hegelians and Marx attached himself to Bauer. However, Marx and Engels came to disagree with Bruno Bauer about socialism and also about the usage of Hegel's dialectic. Marx and Engels quit the Young Hegelians and wrote a scathing criticism of the Young Hegelians in two books, "The Holy Family," and "The German Ideology." Marx, "stood Hegel on his head," in his own view of his role, by turning the idealistic dialectic into a materialistic one, in proposing that material circumstances shape ideas, instead of the other way around. In this, Marx was following the lead of another Young Hegelian, Ludwig Feuerbach. (Feuerbach had not been one of Hegel's favorite pupils; when Feuerbach sent his thesis to Hegel, Hegel refused to reply. So, the title of Young Hegelian should be considered loosely when considering Feuerbach.) What distinguished Marx from Feuerbach, however, was his view of Feuerbach's humanism as excessively abstract, and so no less ahistorical and idealist than what it purported to replace, namely the reified notion of God found in institutional Christianity that legitimized the repressive power of the Prussian state. Instead, Marx aspired to give ontological priority to what he called the "real life process" of real human beings, as he and Friedrich Engels said in an 1846 essay they entitled "The German Ideology": :In direct contrast to German philosophy, which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this, their real existence, their thinking, and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. Also, in his "Theses on Feuerbach," Marx writes that "the philosophers have only described the world, in various ways, the point is to change it," and his materialist approach allows for and empowers such change. In 1844-5, when Marx was starting to settle his account with Hegel and the Young Hegelians in his writings, he critiqued the Young Hegelians for limiting the horizon of their critique to religion and not taking up the critique of the state and civil society as paramount. Indeed in 1844, by the look of Marx's writings in that period (most famous of which is the "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts", a text that most explicitly elaborated his theory of alienation and that was only published in the twentieth century), Marx's thinking could have taken at least three possible courses: the study of law, religion, and the state; the study of natural philosophy; and the study of political economy. He chose the last as the predominant focus of his studies for the rest of his life, largely on account of his previous experience as the editor of the newspaper "Rheinische Zeitung" on whose pages he fought for freedom of expression against Prussian censorship and made a rather idealist, legal defense for the Moselle peasants' customary right of collecting wood in the forest (this right was at the point of being criminalized and privatized by the state). It was Marx's inability to penetrate beneath the legal and polemical surface of the latter issue to its materialist, economic, and social roots that prompted him to critically study political economy. Marx summarized the materialistic aspect of his theory of history, otherwise known as historical materialism (although Engels was the one who coined this term and Marx himself never used it), in the 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: :In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. In this brief popularization of his ideas, Marx emphasized that social development sprang from the inherent contradictions within material life and the social superstructure. This notion is often understood as a simple historical narrative: primitive communism had developed into slave states. Slave states had developed into feudal societies. Those societies in turn became capitalist states, and those states would be overthrown by the self-conscious portion of their working-class, or proletariat, creating the conditions for socialism and, ultimately, a higher form of communism than that with which the whole process began. Marx illustrated his ideas most prominently by the development of capitalism from feudalism and by the prediction of the development of socialism from capitalism. The base-superstructure and stadialist formulations in the 1859 preface took on canonical status in the subsequent development of orthodox Marxism, but some believe that Marx regarded them merely as a short-hand summary of his huge ongoing work-in-progress (which was only published posthumously over a hundred years later as "Grundrisse"). These sprawling, voluminous notebooks that Marx put together for his research on political economy, particularly those materials associated with the study of "primitive communism" and pre-capitalist communal production, in fact, show a more radical turning "Hegel on his head" than heretofore acknowledged by most mainstream Marxists and Marxiologists. In lieu of the Enlightenment belief in historical progress and stages that Hegel explicitly stated (often in a racist, Eurocentric manner, as in his "Lectures on the Philosophy of History"), Marx pursues in these research notes a decidedly empirical approach to analyzing historical changes and different modes of production, emphasizing without forcing them into a teleological paradigm the rich varieties of communal productions throughout the world and the critical importance of collective working-class antagonism in the development of capitalism. Moreover, Marx's rejection of the necessity of bourgeois revolution and appreciation of the obschina, the communal land system, in Russia in his letter to Vera Zasulich; respect for the egalitarian culture of North African Muslim commoners found in his letters from Algeria; sympathetic and searching investigation of the global commons and indigenous cultures and practices in his notebooks, including the "Ethnological Notebooks" that he kept during his last years, all point to a historical Marx who was continuously developing his ideas until his deathbed and does not fit into any pre-existing ideological straitjacket, including that of Marxism itself (a famously telling anecdote is the one in which Marx quipped to Paul Lafargue "All that I know is that I'm not a Marxist").

The political-economy roots of Marxism

Political economy is essential to this vision, and Marx built on and critiqued the most well-known political economists of his day, the British classical political economists. Political economy predates the 20th century division of the two disciplines, treating social relations and economic relations as interwoven. Marx proposed a systematic correlation between labour-values and money prices. He claimed that the source of profits under capitalism is value added by workers not paid out in wages. This mechanism operated through the distinction between "labour power", which workers freely exchanged for their wages, and "labour", over which asset-holding capitalists thereby gained control. This practical and theoretical distinction was Marx's primary insight, and allowed him to develop the concept of "surplus value", which distinguished his works from that of the classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Workers create enough value during a short period of the working day to pay their wages for that day (necessary labour); however, they continue to work for several more hours and continue to create value (surplus labour). This value is not returned to them but appropriated by the capitalists. Thus, it is not the capitalist ruling class that creates wealth, but the workers, the capitalists then appropriating this wealth to themselves. (Some of Marx's insights were seen in a rudimentary form by the "Ricardian socialist" school [http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/schools/utopia.htm] [http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/schools/ricardian.htm].) He developed this theory of exploitation in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, a "dialectical" investigation into the forms value relations take. Capital is written over three volumes, of which only the first was complete at the time of Marx's death. The first volume, and especially the first chapter of that volume, contains the core of the analysis. Hegel's legacy is especially overpowering here, and the work is seldom read with the thoroughness Marx urges in his introduction. According to his prescriptions, the method of presentation proceeds from the most abstract concepts, incorporating one new layer of determination at a time and tracing the effects of each such layer, in an effort to arrive eventually at a total account of the concrete relationships of everyday capitalist society. This investigation is commonly taken to commit Marx to a species of labor theory of value as described above. This and other intrinsic theories of economic value are incompatible with modern, predictive economics in which the theory of value is that of marginalism: on one side, technical production coefficients; on the other, subjective preferences. To neoclassical economists, the labor theory is the reason Marxism failed as an economic theory. Marx critiqued Smith and Ricardo for not realizing that their economic concepts reflected specifically capitalist institutions, not innate natural properties of human society, and could not be applied unchanged to all societies. Marx's theory of business cycles; of economic growth and development, especially in two sector models; and of the declining rate of profit, or crisis theory, are other important elements of Marxist economics. Marx later made tentative movements towards econometric investigations of his ideas, but the necessary statistical techniques of national accounting only emerged in the following century. In any case, it has proved difficult to adapt Marx's economic concepts, which refer to social relations, to measurable aggregated stocks and flows. In recent decades, however, a loose "quantitative" school of Marxist economists has emerged. While it

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