IDEOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL MEANS BEYOND THE PARTY’S CONTROL CAN BE USED AS MEANS AGAINST THE REVOLUTION
from Rodong Sinmun, August 19, 1995, p. 6
In the immortal classic work “Giving Priority to Ideological Work Is an Essential Requirement in Implementing the Socialist Cause,” the great leader Comrade Kim Jong Il clearly elucidated the importance of the working-class party’s guidance and control of ideological and cultural means.
The great leader Comrade Kim Jong Il noted:
“When ideological and cultural means are beyond the party’s guidance and control in the socialist society, they can be used as means against the revolution. This is proved by the fact that betrayers of socialism and reactionaries held sway in ideological and cultural means and used them for attacking socialism in the past in some countries where socialism was being built.”
It is the most important principle of ideological work to guarantee the working-class party’s leadership for ideological work. It is particularly important to strengthen the working-class party’s guidance and control of ideological and cultural means, such as publications, literature, and art. This is because ideological and cultural means serve as powerful weapons for educating, organizing, and mobilizing the masses.
Ideological work is work of handling people’s ideas; press, publishing, literature, and art activities take important part of the party’s ideological work. Ideological and cultural means are powerful and great influential ideological weapons for propagating the party’s ideas and policies to a broad range of the popular masses everyday and at every hour.
In the socialist society, all ideological and cultural means, including the press, publications, literature, and art, should thoroughly serve as means to defend and advance the socialist cause in accordance with the popular masses’ demand for independence. To implement this mission, the ideological and cultural means should be under the party’s guidance and control. Only when they are under the party’s guidance and control, can they truly contribute to defending and completing the socialist cause and brilliantly implement their mission and role as powerful ideological weapons.
As the great leader Comrade Kim Jong Il elucidated, in the socialist society, ideological and cultural means beyond the party’s guidance and control can be used as antirevolutionary means. This is proved by the realities of those countries where capitalism has been rehabilitated.
In the past, betrayers of socialism and reactionaries held sway in ideological and cultural means and used them for attacking socialism in some countries where socialism was being built.
Betrayers of socialism and reactionaries in the former Soviet Union employed cunning methods to push ideological and cultural means out of the working-class party’s control. One of the methods is “openness.” Calling for “openness,” they let papers, magazines, radio, and television handle materials on some cadres’ irregularities. Then, they exaggerated and blazed the cadres’ irregularities as if they were intrinsic demerits of the socialist society, so that they tarnished the image of cadres and brought about the grave consequence of alienating the masses from the party.
Following the stage of “openness,” betrayers of socialism called for “free journalism,” “free publications,” and “free movies and plays.” As a result, the control system of ideological and cultural means vanished, and new publications appeared to directly report party sessions and government meetings, which had been held behind the curtains previously. Ideological and cultural means became able to do whatever they wanted to do. Avail themselves of this situation, betrayers and enemies of socialism held sway in ideological and cultural means and began to attack socialism.
Backed by the betrayers of socialism, a book entitled “There Is No Way But Reform” was published in the former Soviet Union in 1988. The book was written by reactionary philosophers, historians, and economists who had been criticized before. Following the book, many publications came out to begin to viciously slander socialism and criticize it as “totalitarian,” “a military barrack,” or “an administrative and commanding style,” saying deviations that occur in the course of socialist construction are inevitable in the socialist society. At the same time, malignant posters slandering socialism were hung everywhere.
At the fifth meeting of film functionaries, “liberalization” was officially declared, and an erotic film entitled “Those Who Have Lost Taste for Money” was officially produced for the first time in Russia in 1994. Such erotic films as “Little Vera,” “Arlekino,” and “An Emergency Within the Scope of District” are now running in Russia. In addition to these erotic films, a Russian art film entitled “The Heaven” shows illusory scenes of maneuvers by deformed and disabled people who are “ghosts” coming out of tombs. Novels, poems, and songs also have their own ways. The phrase “My mother and I lived here under the shining sun and the blue sky,” which was part of the words of the “Song of Sunrise,” have been changed into “I wish I always had vodka, a salted herring, smoked sausage, and tobacco in my pockets and a girl in my trunk.”
The betrayers of socialism also allowed the private ownership of ideological and cultural means and let them attack socialism. Those countries where capitalism has been rehabilitated put the private ownership into practice and let rich individuals occupy ideological and cultural means. As a result, ideological and cultural facilities have turned into places where their owners earn money by providing people with entertainment. Many erotic magazines, cartoons, art pieces, cassette tapes, and video tapes are produced and sell well in those countries. Postcards have nude pictures of “queens of night” who assume the most loathsome pose. Seen even on tickets of movie theaters and gymnasiums are words inviting male and female debauchees to a certain place at a certain time for a “model performance” on the stage.
Privately owned television and movie theaters run corrupt Western films on a large scale to win popularity and earn a lot of money. For example, a Czech television station runs everyday Western films showing that two protagonists shoot each other’s head with guns at the same time, that a person picks out the liver of a corpse and slices it, and that an actor and an actress make love. With increasing voices against this, the Czech Government has recently decided to restrict erotic and violent television programs at the minimum level. However, such unsound programs are reportedly still aired because the state cannot control privately owned television channels such as NOVA. What interests these corporations is nothing but earning money. The adolescents who saw erotic films are living low-down lives, crying that “we must live in the erotic world under current situation” and that “sex is our bread and life.” As shown above, ideological and cultural means under the sway of betrayers of socialism and reactionaries are infusing people with the capitalist idea and are turning the society into a hotbed of crime.
Ideological and cultural means beyond the control of the working-class party, which were reduced to antirevolutionary means, have made a great contribution to destroying socialism and rehabilitating capitalism in some countries.
Without the party’s guidance and control, revolutionary ideological and cultural means of the working class cannot exist, nor can we think of their militant might. Herein lies the reason why the working-class party’s guidance and control of ideological and cultural means is important.
Kim Chon Son
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