"Classic" revolutions

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Devine:

>
>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"?
>

No revolution is really of the "classic" kind, including the bourgeois
revolution. For all of the use that Marx and Engels made of the French
Revolution of 1789 as a "classic" one, the bourgeoisie did not really lead
the revolution, but elements of the aristocracy. So argues George Comnimel,
a Canadian Marxist of some repute.

North Korea was a proletarian revolution in the same sense that the
Vietnamese or the Chinese revolution were. They were anti-capitalist, just
as the French revolution was anti-feudal despite being led by social layers
not identical with the rising bourgeoisie.

Louis Proyect