Can I ask some questions? I can perhaps see a difference in emphasis, but this not far off what I would have thought MLs would have accepted. But there may be some confusions in my thinking, here.
I don’t have quotes to hand. But I thought that one of the motivating factors of Marxists was to overcome alienation. To do so, Marxists would try to implement socialism/communism and re-join human objectivity and subjectivity—which are separated under capitalism. Does Juche instead argue that we instead need to combat alienation by focusing on human subjectivity (rather than it’s synthesis with objectivity)?
I also thought a central principle was that humans make history. This could mean two things. The first is the one that you described (which I think I agree with), that humans are the subject. Can humans be the subject and the object?
The second needs the context of ‘the history of all hitherto society is the history of class struggle’. Similar to Fukuyama’s idea, but in a Marxist sense, this could be read as: when there are no longer any classes, there will be no more history. I’ve always struggled with that notion. Is this where it’s necessary to say: we only reach that conclusion by treating humans as object; and we can reach a better conclusion by treating humans as subject?
In David Harvey’s companion to Capital volume I he gets ahead of the common argument that Marx completely rejects the idea (in favour of materialism). Harvey emphasises something Marx writes, about bees and architects. Although the be creates something impressive and beautiful, the bee must be distinguished from the architect, who does something similar. The architect, unlike the bee, begins with an idea, imagining first what they want to draw and then build.
In this framing, does Marx suggest that idealism and materialism are contradictory? I thought it was just that the material world comes first. The architect may have an idea, but this is limited by the material world. Or does Juche aim to make idealism equal to materialism. That seems like quite a departure from Marxism-Leninism, too much of a departure to say that Juche uses ML as a base. What am I misunderstanding here?
It seems like a part of Juche is a critique of the USSR. Maybe the issue is that Juche criticises what ML became towards the middle and end of the USSR, rather than what ML looks like in the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin (and Stalin? I’m unsure what Juxche says about Stalin)? Am I on the right lines?
Thanks for this explanation.
Can I ask some questions? I can perhaps see a difference in emphasis, but this not far off what I would have thought MLs would have accepted. But there may be some confusions in my thinking, here.
I don’t have quotes to hand. But I thought that one of the motivating factors of Marxists was to overcome alienation. To do so, Marxists would try to implement socialism/communism and re-join human objectivity and subjectivity—which are separated under capitalism. Does Juche instead argue that we instead need to combat alienation by focusing on human subjectivity (rather than it’s synthesis with objectivity)?
I also thought a central principle was that humans make history. This could mean two things. The first is the one that you described (which I think I agree with), that humans are the subject. Can humans be the subject and the object?
The second needs the context of ‘the history of all hitherto society is the history of class struggle’. Similar to Fukuyama’s idea, but in a Marxist sense, this could be read as: when there are no longer any classes, there will be no more history. I’ve always struggled with that notion. Is this where it’s necessary to say: we only reach that conclusion by treating humans as object; and we can reach a better conclusion by treating humans as subject?
In David Harvey’s companion to Capital volume I he gets ahead of the common argument that Marx completely rejects the idea (in favour of materialism). Harvey emphasises something Marx writes, about bees and architects. Although the be creates something impressive and beautiful, the bee must be distinguished from the architect, who does something similar. The architect, unlike the bee, begins with an idea, imagining first what they want to draw and then build.
In this framing, does Marx suggest that idealism and materialism are contradictory? I thought it was just that the material world comes first. The architect may have an idea, but this is limited by the material world. Or does Juche aim to make idealism equal to materialism. That seems like quite a departure from Marxism-Leninism, too much of a departure to say that Juche uses ML as a base. What am I misunderstanding here?
It seems like a part of Juche is a critique of the USSR. Maybe the issue is that Juche criticises what ML became towards the middle and end of the USSR, rather than what ML looks like in the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin (and Stalin? I’m unsure what Juxche says about Stalin)? Am I on the right lines?
I think the way to conceive of juche as a critique is to conceive of it as exposing a missing element, not as contradicting MLism