re: "Classic" revolutions

[James Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I asked:>> in what sense was the NKorean revolution "proletarian"?<<

Louis answers: >North Korea was a proletarian revolution in the same sense
that the Vietnamese or the Chinese revolution were.<

That doesn't help, since those revolutions can be analyzed in exactly the
same way as I did the Kim il Sung revolution.

>They were anti-capitalist, just as the French revolution was anti-feudal
despite being led by social layers not identical with the rising bourgeoisie.<

Sure, they were anti-capitalist. But unless one believes in a unilinear
theory of history, accepting on faith Marx's unsupported assertion that
capitalism is last antagonist (class-ridden) mode of production, it does
not follow that anti-capitalism is moving in a proletarian direction.

The French revolution may be seen as "bourgeois" even though it wasn't led
by the bourgeoisie because in the end, it empowered the bourgeoisie (making
it "objectively bourgeois"). In what sense did the NKorean, Vietnamese, or
Chinese revolutions empower the proletariat?

Now it's true that the USSR-type revolutions have helped _create_ a
proletariat, by pushing industrialization. But that's something that
capitalism does too.




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
"It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.