N vs. S. Korea

[James Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis writes >Woudld the South Korean boom have been possible without
mammoth support from the US...? The problem with gauging economic success
is that there is no such thing as capitalism in one country. Yugoslavia was
a success in the 1950s and early 60s for reasons that had little to do with
its "market socialism" experiment. I suspect that North Korea's current
economic woes can not be disassociated from the collapse of the Soviet
trading bloc. North Korea's economic model was based on People's China ....
there is more to the North Korea than meets the eye in the NY Times. As far
as bizarre personality cults are concerned, you should not forget that
Reverend Moon is one of the most powerful political and industrial leaders
in South Korea.<

If we take your point as accurate (and it may be so), what this says is
that S. and N. Korea are _similar_. But Louis, you were saying that these
two were _different_. In an earlier missive you said:

>This type of analysis [that of Raya Dunayaskaya's NEWS AND LETTERS group]
can not distinguish between North Korea and South Korea. Both have
extensive state-owned industry and employ various forms of planning. The
difference is that the North had a proletarian revolution and expropriated
the bourgeoisie, while the South did not.<

But now you are saying that they are very similar.

In looking for a difference between the two Koreas, I would pick up on one
word in the second quote: proletarian.

In what sense was the N. Korean revolution "proletarian"? Sure Kim il Sung
_said_ that his revolution was "for the proletariat" or "in the name of the
proletariat." But is there any reason why we should believe him? One of the
principles of historical materialism that Karlos & Freddy enunciated in THE
GERMAN IDEOLOGY is that we shouldn't trust anyone's self-perception and
-description.

I have no doubt that a large number of proletarians -- and more importantly
for a largely agrarian country back in the late 1940s and 1950s, peasants
-- _supported_ the Kim il Sung revolution. It was a revolution against
foreign occupation, against the landlords, etc. that promised a lot of
social benefits to the people.

But I wouldn't call it a "proletarian revolution" unless the proletarians
actually ran the state. And that involves democracy, something that N.
Korean doesn't have. They don't even have the attenuated democracy that S.
Korea has. And for the proletariat to rule, it needs _more_ (not less)
democracy than bourgeois democracy offers.

Maybe Kim il Sung himself started out as a proletarian, along with a lot of
the other CP bureaucrats. But persistent control of the state -- especially
an authoritarian state like that of NK -- creates a social gap between
proletarians and bureaucrats.

State-owned property does not make a society proletarian. After all, the
Pharoah owned the means of production in ancient Egypt. He was hardly
proletarian.

"Expropriation of the bourgeoisie" is necessary but not sufficient to make
a revolution "proletarian," since the state bureaucrats can end up holding
all the cards.

Anyway, in what sense was the NKorean revolution "proletarian"?





in pen-l solidarity,

Jim Devine   jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ.
7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA
310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way
and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.