GREAT TEACHER OF SOCIAL SCIENTISTS

GREAT TEACHER OF SOCIAL SCIENTISTS

by a UK Academic

Talk in Memory of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Jong Il.

Delivered to the meeting called by the Juche Idea Study Group of England

7 December 2013

The great leader Comrade Kim Jong Il made an immortal contribution to social science by systematising, elaborating and developing the Juche idea of Korea’s historic great leader, Comrade Kim Il Sung. On this basis he solved for the first time the question of succession to the leadership of revolution and socialist construction. As Comrade Kim Jong Un explains, Kim Il Sung is Eternal President of the DPRK, not just in words, but because Kim Jong Il solved the problem of immortalizing the leader for the first time in history. Through systematising the Juche idea, he ensured that Kim Il Sung is always with our people and his revolutionary career continues without let-up on this land.

An essential aspect of this achievement lies in the Comrade Kim Jong Il’s contributions to the advance of social thought. As Comrade Kim Jong Un points out:

President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il attached importance to social sciences and paid deep attention to their development, thus developing them into revolutionary and Juche-based social sciences conducive to accomplishing the human cause of independence.

It is our task as social scientists to make our contribution to planting the seeds of Juche in the practical struggle of the peoples of this country by fostering the development a scientific approach to society in opposition to the degenerate intellectual and cultural life foisted upon us within imperialist society. This is our responsibility for which there is no blueprint, an essential lesson which we can learn from the spirit of the Korean people, whose standpoint, as expressed by Comrade Kim Jong Un, is to solve all the problems of revolution in our own way and in conformity with the demands of our revolution the interests of our people and the actual situation of our country. Those principles are immortalised in the teachings of Comrade Kim Jong Il on the basis of his masterly analysis of the highly complicated social and national situations confronting the Korean people in their path towards national liberation, revolution and socialist construction. For Korea, plainly, success in these tasks could not be won by means of the existing formula or methods.

In confronting our task, we shall need to survey the role of social thought in an independent and creative way as it has developed within the intellectual traditions of our country. Only on that basis can we establish the Juche world outlook on firm foundations here.

Comrade Kim Jong Il taught that man is a social being, with consciousness, and moreover, with an aspiration to live independently, and a creative capacity with which to further that aspiration. This unprecedented conception of man provides man, for the first time, with an outlook – the Juche world outlook – that correctly indicates what standpoint to take towards nature, society and ourselves.

This Juche world outlook culminates a long history of people’s endeavours to comprehend and control their destiny. As in the East, so also in the West, early endeavours to this end may be perceived in human culture from its very beginnings, when it is clear that people were already asking such questions as: How did the world originate? What can be done to control the forces of nature? What are those forces? Such questions reflect the property of people to seek to comprehend their destiny and to seek some means of influencing the forces of nature with which they are confronted. However, there was still no idea that man and society were anything else than a part of the natural world; seen from this viewpoint, people could have only a low level of consciousness of their capacity to seize hold of, and shape, their destiny.

But the very fact that such questions and aspirations were being discussed illustrates the fact that man is a social being, a being not comprised within the natural world. In the natural world, there are no beings with consciousness who ask questions about their destiny and how to control it. Man the social being is not a product of biological evolution – that process was long complete before the essential preconditions for a social being in this sense. An animal being – a being within the natural world – does not ask such questions or seek such goals. Animal communities, however complex they may be, are based on adaptation to each other’s existence through instinct, rather than being subject to conscious and purposeful action to mould and develop the way their members live.

With the further development of society and its differentiation into distinct social groups, man’s initial attempts to comprehend the material realities of the world developed further, since there were now those within society who had leisure to further the development of thought, and systematic philosophical inquiry was created. This was an epoch-making advance in man’s understanding of the world. Now there came into being a body of thought dedicated specifically to seeking answers to the question of man’s destiny – how to seize hold of it and shape it. On the negative side, of course, and by the same token, the direction of development of philosophical inquiry was dictated not by the requirements of the women, slaves and oppressed masses for an independent life, but of the elite groups who now emerged as a ruling class, that is, the slave owning class. Their requirement was to mystify the exploited masses and confuse their understanding of the harsh realities of society with which they were faced.

Ultimately, however, it is the masses of the people who move history forward, and, even when their rulers made every effort to exclude them from cultural and organisational life, their level of consciousness of their destiny to live an independent life has steadily grown through history. The slaves of ancient times rose in rebellion, overthrew the ancient empires, and gained a certain tenuous hold on some means of subsisting under feudal domination. Though they were repeatedly thrown back into a situation little better than that of slavery, the social consciousness of the masses was raised to comprehend the idea that they had rights.

Such progressive ideas were taken up and developed in early modern times, when the rising bourgeoisie rode on the tide of the people’s rebellion against feudal oppression. Moreover, in their urgent requirement for scientific and technological advance and for a more rational organisation of society, bourgeois thinkers at times shed some light on the nature of society, for example in the works of Western ‘classical political economy’. Once they had firmly established the capitalist system, however, the bourgeoisie abandoned any such advances, and, with the development of imperialism, resorted to the most reactionary and racist currents in social thought in their attempts to hold back the advance of the scientific understanding of society.

Eventually, the founders of scientific socialism sifted through the heritage of social thought of the West, sharply and definitively differentiating between its historically progressive and reactionary currents, and ending forever any claim of an exploiting class to speak for the masses of the people. Singling out those elements of the intellectual heritage of the West which were scientific, they placed them in the hands of the proletariat.

Following the emergence of the socialist system, a new stage in history opened. As Comrade Kim Jong Il has brilliantly explained, the Juche idea responded to the requirements of this new stage. No longer was the position of the masses of the people that of being objects of oppression, and no longer was the task of social thought one of separating out the progressive from the reactionary currents in the heritage of the social thought of the past; that task had been successfully performed by the founders of scientific socialism, and to seek to continue down that path, as the dogmatists and revisionists still do, is merely to seek to re-invent the wheel! Now, in the age of independence, the masses have entered the stage of history as its subject, as masters of their destiny, reshaping nature, society and themselves, consciously, purposefully and revolutionarily.

By forging the Juche idea into an all-round philosophical, ideological, and methodological body of thought, Comrade Kim Jong Il’s activities, not least his teachings in the field of social science, have made an incalculably valuable contribution to the future of humanity in this era of independence is incalculable. As Comrade Kim Jong Un observes:

Thanks to these activities, the masses’ demand and aspiration for independence became ideas, theories, lines and policies, and the most revolutionary and scientific guidelines, which were easily understood by them and which indicated the true roads for them to take to shape their destiny, were provided.

Thanks to this heritage bequeathed by Comrade Kim Jong Il, the DPRK continues with great distinction to defy imperialist threat and provocation in the era of Songun, and to forge forward towards developing its unique Juche-based socialist system into a banner of independence for the peoples of the whole world.

In the field of social science, we must struggle to purge our schools and universities of the filth of imperialist ideology, much of it first forged and put to use in this, the oldest colonialist heartland. We must expose the rampant commercialism through which the imperialist monopoly corporations have colonised our academic world with their ‘research assessment’ exercises, their fake ‘peer-review’ system, and their rigged appointment and promotion procedures, corrupting our universities, suppressing academic freedom, and seeking to inculcate the venality of degenerate capitalism in the rising generations of students.

By addressing this task, social scientists here in this country can make their contribution to the global struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and imperialism, and for the defence and extension of a socialist world at its core.

As Comrade Kim Jong Un has put it, this heritage has ensured that Kim Il Sung is always with our people and his revolutionary career continues without let-up on this land. It is our responsibility to ensure that his revolutionary career continues without let-up in our land as well.

Long live the memory of Comrade Kim Jong Il, great teacher of social scientists!

Long live the Juche idea!